At the November 2022 meeting of the WTO's Council for Trade in Goods, for which the minutes were recently circulated, several issues related to trade with China were raised for the first time (including U.S. subsidies on clean energy and semiconductors), and various other previously raised issues

At a WTO meeting that was held yesterday and today, several long-standing and new China-U.S. trade conflicts were on the agenda.

Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Qin Gang met with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi last Sunday, with export controls on semiconductors one issue that was discussed. The meeting came a couple days after Japan announced plans to expand its export controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment, which had already witnessed a

China's imports of integrated circuits (ICs), semiconductors and equipment have been falling since the beginning of 2022, providing evidence that the U.S.-China tech war is having an impact on trade, and some degree of decoupling is happening.

At a special meeting of the WTO Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures in October 2022, the United States and China discussed practices related to a Chinese "government guidance fund" in the semiconductor sector.

The Dutch government said that it will introduce export control measures on some semiconductor manufacturing equipment before the summer, in part to "ensure that we maintain our technological leadership" and "reduce our strategic dependence on China." In response, China's Foreign Ministry said that "

A recent report by two Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) scholars attempts to piece together details of the U.S.-Netherlands-Japan agreement on export controls related to semiconductors. The agreement has not been published, nor is it expected to be made public.