U.S. floats new tech-export limits

President Donald Trump’s administration is pushing ahead with plans to tighten restrictions on technology exports, a measure that Deutsche Bank AG says would have a “profound and long lasting adverse impact” on relations between the U.S. and China.

A request for public comment, published Monday on the U.S. government’s Federal Register, asks whether a list of new technologies that have national security applications — from artificial intelligence to microprocessors and robotics — should be subject to more stringent export-control rules.

The Trump administration has received backing from Congress in taking a harder line on protecting critical U.S. technology from foreign threats.

In August, Trump signed legislation to strengthen a panel that reviews investments from abroad for national security risks, which was widely viewed as a way to curtail Chinese investment in the U.S. The export-control measures were contained in the same legislation, and Monday’s Federal

Register notice starts a 30-day period for industry interests to weigh in before Trump makes a decision on what technologies will be covered.

The Treasury Department in October announced a list of technologies that would be subject to heightened scrutiny by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. Monday’s announcement, which would broaden that group to include more advanced innovations, represents the beginning of the administration’s effort to define the technologies that will face tougher reviews for national security risks.

“Many technologies and products are used for both military and civil purposes,” Deutsche Bank analysts Zhiwei Zhang and Yi Xiong wrote in a note.

High-end technology has taken center stage in a burgeoning U.S.-China trade war, as Trump pushes Beijing to drop plans to dominate cutting-edge industries like electric vehicles, robotics and artificial intelligence. Trump plans to discuss trade at a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina, which starts Nov. 30.

Under the proposed curbs, Apple Inc., IBM, Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and similar companies could see limits placed on the way they export the technology behind voice-activated smartphones, self-driving cars and fast supercomputers to China, The Washington Post reported on Monday.