U.S. Export Controls Are The Gift That Keeps On Giving…To The CCP

U.S. Export Controls Are The Gift That Keeps On Giving…To The CCP

U.S. Export Controls Are The Gift That Keeps On Giving…To The CCP

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2026/06/16/us-export-controls-are-the-gift-that-keeps-on-givingto-the-ccp/

Publish Date: 2026-06-16 13:00:00

Source Domain: www.forbes.com

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 18: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote address during the Nvidia GTC Artificial Intelligence Conference at SAP Center on March 18, 2024 in San Jose, California. The developer conference is expected to highlight new chip, software, and AI processor technology. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

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If only members of the U.S. political class were to spend more time in China. If so, the American and Chinese people could perhaps be spared a lot of foolish policy.

Everywhere you look there’s an Apple Store, a Nike Store, McDonald’s, KFCs, Starbucks, and seemingly every other American brand. To produce is to express a desire to consume, and the Chinese are producing feverishly to get all things American.

Notable about Chinese reverence for American products is that it very much extends to technology. It’s not just that Apple sells a fifth of its iPhones in China, it’s that a fast-rising Chinese technology sector is populated with individuals who think the world of the American technology behind products and services. This has long included Nvidia, and its chips that have been so instrumental in what has been a transformational Artificial Intelligence (AI) leap.

Unfortunately, politicians well outside the proverbial arena don’t view foreign production as excitedly as those inside the arena do. All too often they view trade as war, as opposed to what it always and everywhere is: mutual enhancement.

The trade as war theory has sadly informed the rise of AI, along with the infrastructure that has made it possible. With AI seen by politicians as the next big thing, they began to institute rules meant to limit export of the most advanced products lest one country get a leg up on another in AI. The thinking was erroneous.

That’s because the beauty of trade is that when free, it’s as though every corporation is headquartered next door. Better yet, free trade means the greatest minds get to divide up work on the…

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