Brief Note on a Biden Appointment and US Semiconductor Controls

According to a well-placed source, the Biden administration has decided to appoint someone very close to the American semiconductor industry as the head of the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). This position is critical because BIS is in charge of the Entity List. As I have interacted with this future head of BIS, I am as confident as the semiconductor industry source that gave me this information that this appointment portends radical scaling back of the semiconductor controls aimed at Huawei and other companies. With such an appointment, the 20 percent jump in the stock prices of the big American semiconductor capital equipment firms last week has proven to be more than irrational exuberance.