Understanding US Allies' Legal Authority on Export Controls

Understanding U.S. Allies’ Current Legal Authority to Implement AI and Semiconductor Export Controls 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
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 Understanding U.S. Allies’ Current Legal Authority to Implement AI and Semiconductor Export Controls 

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 

 
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 Report
 by 
 
 Gregory C. Allen 
 and 
 Isaac Goldston 
 
 
 

 Published March 14, 2025

 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 Available Downloads
 

 
 
 
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 Executive Summary

 Since October 2022, the United States has devoted significant resources to restricting China’s access to artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced semiconductor technologies. In the final months of the Biden administration, the Department of Commerce issued four additional far-reaching export control updates. On December 2, 2024, it released two rules that added 140 companies to the Entity List, expanded the scope of the Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR), and restricted new technology areas such as high-bandwidth memory, among other measures. In the second week of January 2025, the Department of Commerce issued the AI Diffusion Framework and the Foundry Due Diligence Rule , further shaping the spread of AI and semiconductor technologies throughout the world. Export controls remain front and center for the second Trump administration, which directed an effort to “identify and eliminate loopholes in existing export controls—especially those that enable the transfer of strategic goods, software, services, and technology . . . to strategic rivals and their proxies” on its first day in office.

 However, countries like the Netherlands, Germany, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan continue to control key chokepoints in the AI and semiconductor value chain, making unilateral action only so effective. Furthermore, the existing multilateral export control architecture is neither sufficiently flexible nor fast to allow for the kind of sophisticated, targeted controls that the United States has levied on China. The success or failure of the U.S. export control strategy is thus dependent on its allies’ ability to implement controls outside of this traditional architecture or U.S. extraterritorial regulations covering allies.

 This paper provides an in-depth analysis of U.S. allies’ export control authorities related to AI and semiconductor technologies and does the same analysis for China. It demonstrates that U.S. allies often do not have equivalents to U.S. export control authorities and tools like the FDPR and Entity List, but that they generally do have the capability to introduce s

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