For years, officials in Washington have used export controls to slow China’s ability to develop cutting-edge technologies, especially ones with military applications like semiconductors and artificial intelligence.

多年来，华盛顿的官员一直利用出口管制手段来限制中国发展尖端技术的能力，特别是那些具有军事用途的技术，比如半导体和人工智能。

Over the past decade, these export controls have driven a wedge between the world’s two largest economies.

过去十年间，这些出口管制措施在世界两个最大经济体之间制造了裂痕。

When officials from the United States and China met this week in London to try to work out their differences over trade, export controls were again front and center.

本周，美中官员在伦敦会晤，试图解决两国在贸易上的分歧，出口管制再次成为核心议题。

“In eight years of negotiating with the Chinese, I have never had a meeting where they didn’t want to talk about export controls,” Jamieson Greer, the United States Trade Representative, said on Tuesday.

美国贸易代表杰米森·格里尔周二表示：“在我与中方八年的谈判中，他们没有一次是不想讨论出口管制问题的。”

It is not clear what actions U.S. officials agreed to take in exchange for China easing its exports of rare earth metals — a key sticking point for Washington. But the pillars of U.S. export controls to slow the flow of advanced technology to China appear to remain intact.

目前尚不清楚美国官员承诺采取哪些行动来换取中国放宽稀土金属的出口——这是华盛顿方面的关键诉求。但美国为限制先进技术流向中国而设立的出口管制体系似乎并无改变。

How did President Trump first use export controls?

那么，特朗普总统当初是如何开始使用出口管制这个工具的呢？

During his first term, Mr. Trump, asserting that China had ripped off the United States, used export controls as one tool among many in his effort to correct imbalances of trade and manufacturing.

在第一个任期里，特朗普声称中国占了美国的便宜，于是将出口管制作为纠正贸易与制造业失衡的众多工具之一。

Mr. Trump kicked off a trade war with Beijing in 2018 when he put tariffs on solar panels imported from China. The ensuing tit-for-tat tariffs ranged from 15 to 30 percent, and soon encompassed airplanes, cars and other goods.

2018年，特朗普对从中国进口的太阳能电池板征收关税，由此打响了对华贸易战。随后实施的报复性关税税率介于15%至30%之间，并迅速涵盖了飞机、汽车等商品。

The Trump administration first used export controls to impede the development of a Chinese tech company in 2018, when it barred American firms from selling to the Chinese electronics firm ZTE.

特朗普政府首次动用出口管制手段遏制中国科技企业发展是在2018年，当时它禁止美国企业向中国电子制造商中兴通讯销售产品。

The Commerce Department under President Barack Obama had taken a similar approach several years earlier, when it said ZTE had violated U.S. sanctions on Iran. The Trump administration said ZTE had failed to address the problem. Mr. Trump lifted the ban after ZTE agreed to pay a $1 billion fine.

多年前，奥巴马政府的商务部就曾采取过类似手段——指控中兴通讯违反了美国对伊朗的制裁。特朗普政府称中兴通讯未能解决问题，最终在其同意支付10亿美元罚款后解除了禁令。

Then in 2019, the Trump administration added the telecommunications giant Huawei to a trade blacklist that barred U.S. companies from selling parts to the company.

随后在2019年，特朗普政府将电信巨头华为列入贸易黑名单，禁止美国企业向其供应零部件。

Before he left office, President Trump struck an agreement for China to buy $200 billion worth of U.S. exports. A report later found that China came nowhere close to fulfilling the terms of the deal.

在卸任前，特朗普总统达成了一项协议：中国将购买价值2000亿美元的美国商品。但后续的报告发现，中国远远未能履行该协议的条款。

荷兰光刻机巨头阿斯麦生产的尖端芯片制造设备。美国政府成功游说荷兰政府，禁止该公司向中国出口高端光刻机。

How did the Biden administration build on them?

那么拜登政府又是如何在此基础上进一步加码的？

President Joseph R. Biden Jr. substantially expanded Washington’s use of export controls. The goal shifted from targeting specific Chinese firms to constraining China’s overall advancement in technologies with military uses.

拜登总统大幅升级了华盛顿运用出口管制的力度。其政策目标已从针对个别中国企业，转向遏制中国在具有军事用途技术方面的整体进步。

The Biden administration repeatedly tightened the export controls to cut off China’s nascent ability to make its own chips. It barred companies from selling certain chips to Chinese clients if they had been made using U.S. products or software.

拜登政府多次收紧出口管制，以扼杀中国初现雏形的芯片自主生产能力。它禁止美国企业向中国客户出售任何使用美国产品或软件制造的特定芯片，

Mr. Biden also expanded a push begun under the Trump administration to pressure companies in allied nations to stop selling equipment to Chinese chip firms, including the Dutch technology company ASML, the only maker of complex lithography machines used to make cutting-edge computer chips.

拜登还扩大了特朗普政府时期开始的一项努力——向盟友的企业施压，要求它们停止向中国芯片公司出售设备，其中就包括荷兰的科技企业阿斯麦，它是制造尖端计算机芯片所用的复杂光刻机的唯一生产商。

“The Biden administration declared a plan to hold back China as a whole in specific areas,” said Graham Webster, an academic focused on geopolitics and technology at Stanford. “That was a big shift.”

斯坦福大学研究地缘政治与技术领域的学者格雷厄姆·韦伯斯特表示：“拜登政府宣布了一项在特定领域全面遏制中国的计划。这标志着重大战略转向。”

What has President Trump done during this term?

那么特朗普总统本届任期有何动作？

Since taking office a second time in January, Mr. Trump has ended a sweeping rule governing how American-made A.I. chips could be shared with foreign countries that was put in place at the end of Mr. Biden’s term. Trump administration officials have said they will replace it, but it is not clear what the new rule could look like.

自1月再度就职以来，特朗普终止了拜登政府末期制定的关于美制人工智能芯片对外共享的全面管制规定。特朗普政府官员表示将出台替代政策，但新规的具体内容尚不明朗。

U.S. officials have also taken steps to crack down on the flow of chips to China from America’s leading chip maker, Nvidia. The company had responded to the Biden administration’s export controls by making one of its chips less powerful to fall below the government’s performance thresholds. In April, Nvidia disclosed that U.S. officials were requiring a license for future sales of those chips to China, forcing the company to take a $5.5 billion hit on inventory it had planned to sell.

美国官员还采取措施，打击美国领先芯片制造商英伟达流向中国的芯片。该公司曾通过降低某款芯片性能，使其低于政府设定的门槛，来应对拜登政府的出口管制。今年4月，英伟达披露，美国官员要求未来向中国销售这些芯片必须获得许可证，导致英伟达对其原本计划出售的库存计提55亿美元损失。

In April, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party opened an investigation into Nvidia’s sale of chips across Asia to assess whether the U.S. chip maker knowingly provided key technology to the Chinese A.I. start-up DeepSeek, potentially in violation of U.S. rules.

同月，美国众议院中共问题特设委员会对英伟达在亚洲销售芯片展开调查，以评估它是否涉嫌故意向中国人工智能初创企业深度求索提供了关键技术——此举可能违反了美国的技术管制法规。