I imagine this will only undermine that goal. If this trade war is about stupid “tough on China”political posturing, it’s obviously going to backfire. If there really is some amazing national defense reason to limit chip exports, China will obviously respond by investing heavily in R&D and domestic production capacity. In ten years, we’ll probably be doing protectionism the other way to protect Nvidia from new Chinese competitors.

From an economics standpoint, it’s backwards. If anything, China should be the one limiting chip imports to protect their upstart chip makers and give them space to catch up. We’re just doing an “infant industry” strategy for them. And all for vague “national security” reasons.