US export approvals stalling

U.S. approvals for Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices to ship some artificial intelligence chips to China are slowing from weeks to months inside the Commerce Department’s export-control office. (bis.gov) (technews.tw) The office is the Bureau of Industry and Security, which writes export rules and reviews license requests for sensitive technology under the Export Administration Regulations. A Bloomberg report, republished by TechNews on April 14, said the bureau lost 101 employees in the past year, about 19% of staff, while turnover in rulemaking and licensing roles ran near 20%. (bis.gov) (technews.tw) The bottleneck follows a January 13, 2026 rule that moved Nvidia H200, Advanced Micro Devices MI325X and similar chips into case-by-case review for China if applicants meet security conditions. Those conditions include compliance procedures at the Chinese buyer and third-party testing in the United States. (bis.gov) That policy created a legal path for some sales, but each shipment still needs people to review paperwork, coordinate with other agencies and sign licenses. TechNews, citing Bloomberg, said average processing time in the first half of 2025 reached 76 days, up from 38 days in fiscal 2023. (bis.gov) (technews.tw) The delays reach beyond China. The same report said licenses tied to Nvidia shipments to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and export requests for Advanced Micro Devices MI308 chips, have also been caught in the queue. (technews.tw) This is not the first warning that staffing problems were freezing export approvals. Reuters reported on August 1, 2025 that thousands of license applications were stuck in limbo at the bureau and that one U.S. official described the backlog as the longest in more than three decades. (theoutpost.ai) In fiscal 2023, the bureau processed 37,943 license applications, approved 32,365, returned 4,998 without action and denied 580. Those figures show how much routine licensing work the office handled before the current slowdown. (bis.gov) The companies have different stakes in the China market, but the licensing problem is the same. Nvidia has built China-specific products to stay inside U.S. rules, while Advanced Micro Devices has sought approvals for its own accelerators; if licenses sit unsigned, compliant products still do not ship. (bis.gov) (technews.tw) The bureau’s own mission statement says it is supposed to protect national security while promoting U.S. technology leadership. Right now, the pace of that mission depends not only on policy, but on whether the government has enough staff to move licenses across the desk. (bis.gov)