Taiwan has added Huawei and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) to its export control list, bringing it into line with US trade policy.

By including the Chinese chipmakers on its Strategic High-Tech Commodities Entity List, Taiwanese companies will now need to obtain an export license before selling to them.

In a statement published to its website, Taiwan’s International Trade Administration said it had added 601 entities to the list following a regular inter-departmental review. In total, 10,844 entities and individuals are included on the list, with new additions including those involved in “arms proliferation activities... from Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Myanmar, and mainland China, including Chinese companies such as Huawei and SMIC.”

Huawei has been on the US Entity List since 2019, with SMIC added in December 2020. Last week, officials from the US and China said they had agreed on a framework for a deal tackling some aspects of the trade war between the two countries.

Details of the framework have not been revealed, and the deal still needs to be agreed upon by Trump and Xi.

In late 2024, the US government opened an investigation after receiving notification from Taiwanese chip company TSMC that a customer had placed an order with the company for a chip that resembled Huawei’s Ascend 910B.

Following the opening of the investigation, TSMC announced it would stop making AI chips using its advanced process nodes of 7nm or smaller for Chinese customers.

TSMC previously produced the chip’s predecessor for Huawei but has not worked with the company since US sanctions came into force in 2020. It has been noted that there is no suggestion TSMC willfully or maliciously violated US sanctions; however, the company could still face a $1 billion penalty in order to settle the case.

Huawei’s Ascend 920 AI chip was launched earlier this year, and is reportedly produced using the 6nm process node and is expected to offer more than 900 teraflops (BF16 performance) per card, whilst boasting 4Tbps of memory bandwidth.

However, last week, Huawei’s CEO Ren Zhengfei, told Chinese state media: “The United States has exaggerated Huawei's achievements. Huawei is not that great. We have to work hard to reach their evaluation,” adding, “our single chip is still behind the US by a generation.”