The US Commerce Department has held off on adding Chinese AI developer DeepSeek, memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), and more than 100 other Chinese tech firms to its trade blacklist, known as the Entity List. The delay, stretching nearly eight months without any updates, represents the longest such gap in over a decade.
These companies were already approved for the list by an interagency committee. The hold-up is a deliberate choice by the Trump administration to keep the temperature down with Beijing while broader trade negotiations play out.
What’s actually being delayed
The Entity List is one of Washington’s most potent trade weapons. Companies placed on it are effectively cut off from American technology, requiring special licenses for any US firm to do business with them.
At least 75 of the delayed firms are connected to advanced semiconductor manufacturing, AI technology, and supply chains feeding China’s military apparatus. DeepSeek and CXMT sit at the top of that queue.
