Are America’s allies the holes in its export-control fence?
export-control regime. American sanctions’ global pretensions depend on the co-operation of allies. In principle, democratic governments in Asia and Europe are similarly wary of China, and devising their own export controls.
In practice, their policies are not always aligned with Uncle Sam’s. The result could be a mesh of rules that, once in place, would impose costs on technology companies without doing much to bolster national security in the way that the regimes’ architects envisioned. This is not the first time that the democratic world has attempted to stem the flow of technology to undemocratic adversaries.
After the second world war 17 countries, led by America, established the Co-ordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls to limit exports of strategic resources and technologies to the Communist bloc. The body was disbanded in 1994, once the Soviet threat was no more. America’s efforts to co-ordinate some of its anti-Chinese restrictions have so far been much more piecemeal.
The closest President Joe Biden’s administration has come to co-ordination is an opaque agreement sealed in January with Japan and the Netherlands. This was important to America because Dutch and Japanese firms such as ASML and Tokyo Electron, respectively, are the sole manufacturers of sophisticated chipmaking tools without which it is almost impossible to make the most advanced semiconductors. In July Japan’s government introduced rules limiting the exports of advanced chip technology.
The Dutch followed suit in September. Look closer, though, and the nuts and bolts of the three countries’ export controls vary considerably. The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), America’s export-control agency, publishes an “entity list" of
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