President Trump is expected to ease restrictions and artificial intelligence (AI) chip exports to Saudi Arabia while meeting with Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman on his trip to the Middle East. This has raised concerns that the technology could be resold to China.

Brian McCarthy, Macrolens managing principal and chief strategist, explains the difficulties in containing the trade flows of semiconductors.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

Talk to me then about some of the news we're getting this morning out of President Trump's meetings in Saudi Arabia. The president planning to allow Saudi Arabia to more easily import AI chips from the likes of Nvidia and AMD. To what extent do you think that those chips could then be sold on to China? And then how does that impact say tech names over in China, that they will have a way to potentially get access to those high-powered chips?

00:45 Speaker B

Yeah, it's been my contention all along with this chip stuff that it's just really hard to bottle up knowledge, and it's really hard to bottle up these chips, we found. Um, I assume they'll have some strictures on the resale of these chips, uh, whether they're effective or not, uh, who knows, probably not, because as we've seen uh throughout the Biden error chip controls, it's just very, very hard to put a net around this stuff. Uh, and the Chinese are very diligent, they have a very good network of, uh, you know, ways to move products underground, uh, you know, for all kinds of products. In fact, China is struggling with, uh, smuggling of rare earths through their export controls. So it goes both ways. Uh, and I think just it's just very hard to bottle up the the tech in terms of both the hardware and the and the IP.

02:38 Speaker A

So, yes, with the IP, which was part of the phase 1 2020 trade deal from Trump 1.0 administration, how much more difficult is it going to be in this day and age and in this environment to to to track and make sure that that intellectual property is is not being essentially duplicated or replicated, I should say, within that region that would then create even more of a competitive headwind for some of the companies that want access into the region but also want to make sure that they're still securing their own competitive advantage.

03:43 Speaker B

Right, right, on a scale of 1 to 10, it's about a 12 in terms of difficulty. It it's it's impossible, basically. So we're going to hear a lot from, uh, Treasury Secretary Basant and and from the president and others, uh, about this phase one deal and sort of putting that Humpty Dumpty back together in coming months. And I think your viewers should keep in mind, we can force China to buy more soybeans and buy more aircraft and things like that. But in terms of any of the so-called structural reforms, whether it's cracking down on theft of intellectual property, or getting China to reduce its subsidies to, you know, the the winners it picks in its export sector, or getting China to rebalance its economy to more consumption, these are all complete and utter fantasies. I don't believe the Trump administration believes any of this stuff. Um, you know, we saw that phase one deal went nowhere. It was completely not enforced, but China really, I don't think had any intention of ever doing anything beyond buying a few more soybeans. So all of that is uh it's fake, it's fake news, you might say. Um, but that might not stop the it's something the Trump administration can use if they need to to sort of justify a punt, which is what they've done for three months at this point, whether it extends longer, there's a lot of variables, uh, you know, that that we'll see over the next few months that will play into that.  Related Videos

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