The Government’s bottleneck slows down its exports to China

The US Department of Commerce does not give the slightest respite to chip designers to artificial intelligence (AI) Americans. And the largest are NVIDIA and AMD. When these companies receive an order from one of their Chinese clients must apply for an export license to this government entity and indicate which GPU they intend to send to China, their specifications and which client is going to use them, among other relevant information. Once the bureaucracy has been put in place, the Department of Commerce technicians analyze the export requests in the framework established by current regulation and approve or deny the sale of integrated circuits to China. This is the usual procedure, so there is nothing new up to this point. However, as stated BloombergNVIDIA, AMD and other American AI chip designers face a very serious problem: the Commerce Department takes several months to process their export licenses. The US bureaucracy is torpedoing NVIDIA and AMD The staffing of the Department of Commerce has been drastically reduced in recent months, and in the current context this scenario represents a very serious problem. The Industry and Security Office of this entity is not only responsible for processing export licenses linked to AI chips; It is also in charge of carrying out investigations into the tariffs deployed by the Administration led by Donald Trump. And with fewer personnel than in 2024 and 2025 it cannot cope. The Office of Industry and Security has lost 101 employees in recent months According to Bloombergthe Office of Industry and Security has lost 101 employees in recent months, which represents a 19% reduction in staff compared to what it had in 2024. Curiously, the staff who are specifically dedicated to developing regulations linked to the semiconductor industry and reviewing applications for export licenses has decreased by 20%although it has not been revealed at the moment what this personnel flight is due to. Jeffrey Kessler, the Undersecretary of Commerce, wants, according to Tom’s Hardwarepersonally examine all license applications linked to AI chips. Here lies the bottleneck. Many of its office staff are busy with issues arising from the Iran war, and meanwhile NVIDIA has still not been able to send to China not a single H200 GPU. Officially it can do so, but before delivering this chip to its Chinese clients it must receive express approval from Kessler. AMD is in the same situation. It has not yet been able to deliver its MI308 AI GPU to its Chinese customers. However, this problem is not only suffocating exports to China. NVIDIA is still waiting to receive approval from the Department of Commerce to be able to deliver the latest orders it has received from its clients in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. During 2025, the Office of Industry and Security took an average of 76 days to resolve export requests, but this period is increasing in 2026. Very bad news for AMD and NVIDIA. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Tom’s Hardware | Bloomberg In Xataka | We already know what the chips that will arrive until 2039 will be like. The machine that will allow them to be manufactured is close

The map of Spain’s exports, a much more industrial country than you think

In a global world but with tariffs where China is the factory of the world and Germany is the engine of EuropeIt is easy to fall into historical clichés when we talk about the Spanish state and the great Mediterranean classics such as olive oil, ham or wine, but the reality is that Spain exports many more products to the world. Yes, those typical ones appear on the list, but there are other less known ones that are ahead. And if we open the range to products and services, we cannot miss a sector in which it is a world power: tourism. He Atlas of Economic Complexity from the Harvard Kennedy School is a very useful tool from the popular Harvard University, which takes the international trade data that different states report to the United Nations to display them in a single graph after cleaning them with the Bustos-Yildirim method. It includes data from 250 countries and territories, classified into 20 categories of goods and five categories of services, covering more than 6,000 products. The result is an x-ray of what Spain sells to the world and what it reveals does not always coincide with the image we have. The last period of time collected by the Atlas of Economic Complexity is 2024, where we see that the Spanish state exported 590,000 million dollars in more than a dozen sectors. And there is a clear dominant: the service sector. What does Spain sell to the world? 2024 Edition. Harvard Atlas of Economic Complexity Travel and tourism takes over the top left corner, worth $107 billion. It is pure tourism: according to the World Travel & Tourism Councilthat is the spending of international tourists within the territory, 10.9% more than the previous year. It is followed by a generic “Business” and if we take into account other pink portions such as insurance, financial services, transportation or the mixed bag of “Not specified”, we find that this pink band of services is 163,000 million dollars of the total, that is, Services account for 28% of everything that Spain exports. There is life beyond services The second largest rectangle on the graph corresponds to cars, with a value of $37.1 billion. It’s in the upper right corner, in purple: the car is also the first manufactured productbut in third place and well behind two categories of services. As we saw in this map of the European automobile industrythe gold of the sector in the old continent belongs to Germany, but Spain takes the silver, with a share of 16.4% and almost two million cars assembled per year. Next to it is the rectangle of engine parts, with 10,000 million dollars. However, if we add the set of cars, parts and commercial vehicles, the set adds up to about 65 billion dollars. That is to say, that automotive is the second sector that Spain exports the most. From this point on the difference is no longer so much and in fact it can be divided into two. On the one hand and in pink, the chemical block, with medicines as the most prominent industry (more than 12,000 million dollars). The total is around 37 billion dollars. Yellow corresponds to food, which together represents about 45 billion dollars. Here exports are scattered with pork, olive oil, wine or citrus being the most relevant. Outside of these sectors, the most notable is petroleum and refined oil, with just under 9 billion dollars and below 3%. Minerals, machinery, metallurgy, electronics or textiles have even less influence. A global and deeper reading of the map makes it clear that Spain is, in terms of exports, a tourist and agri-food power with a notable automobile and chemical industry. Dependence on tourism is a double-edged sword in that it allows us to take advantage of Spain’s competitive advantages, but at the same time it depends on external factors, such as COVID or emerging markets that can absorb demand with lower prices. And although it is money that comes in without the need to manufacture anything, it does not add complexity: there are no patents or exportable technologies. Furthermore, the quality of employment is lower than other sectors. In short, it is a structural issue: no rich country sustains itself by selling good weather and that is the best invitation to reindustrialize. In Xataka | Who has seen you and who sees you, Spain: Google Maps to find out how it has changed from the 50s to today In Xataka | Wealth inequality by country, explained in a graph: Spain among those where the wealth gap has grown the most Cover | The Atlas of Economic Complexity

In the middle of the commercial war, China has found a way to punish US exports. And you don’t need tariffs

In full electoral campaign, when there was still talk of A fierce duel With Kamala Harris at the polls, Donald Trump recognized during An interview In Chicago that the term you like most about Shakespeare’s language is Tariff (Tariff). “For me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary”, proclaimed. View The forcefulness With which China has responded to its commercial war, it could well think that “tariff” is also Xi Jinping’s favorite word, but the truth is that Beijing has its own way of hitting the US trade. A much more discreet than rates. Tax pulse. Trump did not exaggerate to proclaim his love for tariffs. And good proof is that in the almost three months it has been in the White House, it has launched more or less clear ads (and also the occasional Auto amendment) of rates aimed at steel and aluminum or The cars and its components. Also of course the bad calls “Reciprocal tariffs”embodied in the famous rate table that presented A few weeks ago in the Rosaleda of the White House, and those that already appear on the horizon for Chips and drugsamong others. With the passing of the days and after Trump Pausara much Of its tariffs for 90 days, the commercial war has basically enchanted between the US and China. Washington has decided to apply to Chinese imports rates that rise at 145%while Beijing has returned the blow to Trump raising his own 125%. That answer does not mean that the tariffs are the only tool to which the Chinese executive has resorted to face the US. After all … aren’t there other ways to stop imports? Who needs tariffs? The news He has advanced it The American magazine POLITICAL: Throughout the last four months, Beijing has activated a series of bureaucratic obstacles and agreements that have had a clear effect on the flow of US imports, reducing them from or even stopping them. The method is more stealthy than the tariff war (and perhaps does not inject the thousands of millions to the public coffers that Trump is looking for with the tariffs), but allows Beijing to hit the US at a sensitive point, its commercial exports. THE KEY: Non -tariff barriers. “A tariff pays and things are more expensive, this is a total restriction to the ability to send products to that country,” Ben Lilliston commentsof the Institute of Agricultural and Commercial Policy. It is not a minor note if the intense commercial flow between China and the US is taken into account, which in 2024 resulted in the export of goods to China by value of 143.5 billion and imports that amounted to almost 439,000 million. But … How do you do it? POLITICAL Quote some specific cases. For example, Beijing has decided Do not renew At the moment the export permits of hundreds of meat packaging plants and has claimed that some products derived from American chickens do not meet their standards. You don’t have to look much in the newspaper library news in that line. Does A few days The General Administration of Customs warned of the appearance of Furacilina, a substance prohibited in the country, in three lots of meat of US companies. Result: suspended its import. The Chinese organism took A similar measure With the sorghum products of an American company after detecting “excessive levels of zaralenone”, a type of mycotoxin. The decision was announced one day after Trump imposed a 34% tariff on Chinese goods, although Beijing insists in which the restrictions for technical reasons and objectives apply: “To prevent risks and guarantee the safety of livestock production and consumer health.” Are there more cases? Yes. ABC News recently He informed that some 300 US slaughterhouses have not yet renewed their export permits to move beef to China, which seems to have found a substitute in Australian livestock. Beijing’s reluctance to renew the licenses have in fact stopped a good part US rescor export. And that are major words. In 2024 the US exported to China worth 1.6 billion dollars. Another sector that has also been emphasized of turbulence is that of natural gas. At the beginning of the month, with the commercial war about to climb, Bloomberg revealed that China had no matter of US LNG 60 days. The scenario remembers the one who lived years ago, during Trump’s first mandate, when the Asian giant stopped receiving US shipments during Around 400 days. Citing Kpler data, POLITICAL assures that so far this year of China imported only a cargo of gas compared to 14 of the same period of 2024. Hitting where it hurts the most. Chinese restrictions not only affect US exports, with their corresponding impact on a flow that moves millions of dollars. By applying Beijing can point to concrete sectors, such as Lift POLITICALindustries rooted in states (Iowa or Nebraska, for example) that usually act as republican vote heshes and therefore can exert greater pressure on Trump. Something similar did A few weeks ago The Brussels when he planned his own response to the first USA tariffs. Bureaucratic obstacles and restrictions also force companies to move in slippery terrain, even more than that of tariffs. “We do not want health and security to become a political issue,” Darci Vetter argueswith experience in the US commercial representative office. “Convert carers carefully considered and based on science into a political issue.” Marc Busch, who has also exercised as an advisor to the US Department of Commerce, is even more categorical: “This is what China does: commercial actions disguised as legitimate public policies with a scientific basis.” Is it a new measure? No, not exactly. The Chinese government seems to have intensified restrictions that are not new and can even go back to Your entrance In the World Trade Organization (WTO), more than 20 years ago. The US is not the first country that is found with brakes to its exports that coincide with moments of tension with Beijing. It happened to him … Read more

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