Globalization, Primacy, and the US–China Tech War in “Emerging and Foundational Technologies”

Abstract In 2018, the US Congress passed the Export Control Reform Act and the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, both of which were designed to bring about a targeted decoupling with China in what Congress called “emerging and foundational technologies.” This legislation is a critical, but thus far overlooked, strand of Washington’s “tech war.” It seeks to go beyond individual companies, such as Huawei, to “decouple” in two large new categories of technology—emerging and foundational. This article examines why Congress has tried to pursue this ambitious form of tech decoupling and offers an empirical examination of its impact so far. The Department of Commerce has struggled to define these two new categories of technology and has been unable to implement the legislation in the manner originally envisaged by Congress. Despite this, and despite intense lobbying against these controls by affected industries, both Congress and the Executive appear to be expanding the tech war further to pursue “as large of a lead as possible” over China. We argue that the tech war is an example of a deglobalizing impulse that is likely to persist in US foreign policy regardless of whether it is successful.