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A 300mm wafer on display at the booth of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company during the 2023 World Semiconductor Conference at Nanjing International Expo Center on July 19, 2023, in Nanjing, China.

Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

The U.S. has revoked a waiver that allowed Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to export key chipmaking equipment and technology to its manufacturing plant in Nanjing, China, as Washington continues to ramp up efforts to limit Beijing’s semiconductor advancement.

The change will remove a fast-track export privilege known as validated end user (VEU) status, effective Dec. 31, TSMC confirmed to CNBC on Wednesday.

The world’s largest contract chipmaker had received the exemption soon after the Commerce Department launched its initial restrictions on the sale of U.S.-origin chipmaking tools in 2022.

Under the new policy, shipments of chipmaking tools with American origins to TSMC’s manufacturing facilities in Nanjing, China, will require U.S. export licenses.

“While we are evaluating the situation and taking appropriate measures, including communicating with the US government, we remain fully committed to ensuring the uninterrupted operation of TSMC Nanjing,” the company said. 

South Korean memory chipmakers SK Hynix and Samsung also had their VEU privileges revoked on Friday, according to a statement on the Federal Register. Both companies run China-based memory chip facilities.

At the same time, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security said in a statement that it was closing the VEU “Biden-era loophole” for all foreign semiconductor manufacturers.

It added that it intends to grant export license applications to allow former VEU participants to operate their existing manufacturing facilities in China, but not to expand capacity or upgrade technology in China. 

Jeffrey Kessler, under secretary of commerce for industry and security, stated that the Trump administration is “committed to closing export control loopholes — particularly those that put U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage. Today’s decision is an important step towards fulfilling this commitment.”

According to Brady Wang, associate director at Counterpoint Research, the policy changes “reflect Washington’s broader push to tighten control over semiconductor equipment and technology exports to China, strengthening U.S. power over chip production in China,” he said.  

TSMC operates two manufacturing sites in China, one in Shanghai and Nanjing, with the latter facility more advanced. To power its fabrication plants, the company uses hardware from several U.S. chip equipment suppliers, including Applied Materials and  KLA Corp.

However, according to Wang, as TSMC’s Nanjing fab contributes less than 3% of TSMC’s total revenue and represents a minor share of its global capacity, the financial impact on the company “should be minor.”

Renewed crackdown? 

The recent VEU reversals may come as a surprise to some, as they follow the Trump administration’s announcement that it would ease controls on the export of some American artificial intelligence chips. 

Last month, the U.S. said Nvidia and AMD would be allowed to resume exports of some of their previously banned made-for-China AI chips, and signaled that the policy could be expanded.

Prior to that, the administration had also struck down the Biden-era AI diffusion rule, a move that could’ve seen the expansion of export controls on advanced AI chips.

The rollbacks of advanced chip restrictions have been posed by U.S. officials as a way for the U.S. to maintain the supremacy of the AI technology stack globally, including in China. 

However, the removal of the VEU exemptions shows that the same logic is unlikely to be applied to memory and chipmaking technologies. 

According to Ray Wang, research director for semiconductors, supply chain and emerging technology at Futurum Group, the policies show that Washington remains committed to preventing China from boosting its local chip production capacity and cultivating its local know-how and talent. 

“Zooming out, another underlying goal may be to constrain companies’ ability to expand their supply chain footprint in China—particularly in strategic sectors such as semiconductors, which the administration is keen to prevent,” he said. 

Conversely, the Trump administration has been working to attract more of the semiconductor supply chain to the shores of the U.S. through tariff threats.

This year, TSMC, SK Hynix and Samsung have committed new investments into their American manufacturing plans. 

On Monday, shares of SK Hynix and Samsung fell on the VEU news. However, shares of TSMC traded flat on Wednesday after news of its VEU reversal.

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Wall Street is too fixated on the high valuations of tech and speculative stocks, Cramer says

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Wall Street is too fixated on the high valuations of tech and speculative stocks, Cramer says

Some stocks deserve a higher premium, says Jim Cramer

CNBC’s Jim Cramer suggested Wall Street is too fixated the on large valuations of certain tech and speculative stocks, chalking up Tuesday’s market-wide decline in part to Palantir‘s nearly 8% loss despite strong earnings results.

“The larger issue is that we’re at the moment where money managers, when asked if the market’s too expensive, immediately think of the high-flying speculative stocks or those in the high-growth artificial intelligence column, and so they warn you away from the entire asset class,” he said. “These guys don’t think of the other 334 stocks in the S&P 500 that sell for less than 23 times earnings — those aren’t outrageous.”

Declines in Palantir and other artificial intelligence companies helped bring stocks down on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 losing 1.17%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 0.53% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite sinking 2.04%. Palantir managed to beat the estimates and offer solid guidance, citing growth in the artificial intelligence business. But investors worried broadly about the huge valuations of tech giants that have been leading the market to new heights.

Investors who saw Palantir as their “north star” were alarmed by its big pullback after a great quarter, according to Cramer. The fears triggered “a raft of selling” as these investors questioned the market as a whole, he continued.

Palantir can be a tough stock to classify, Cramer suggested, saying it straddles two different market segments — one centered around tech and artificial intelligence, and another focused on speculative stocks. He noted that the data-driven software company is very lucrative and fast growing, and it “defies easy description.” He listed off a number of its business arms — including its work as a defense contractor and as a consultant for companies looking to modernize and improve profitability.

To Cramer, it’s reasonable to consider that there’s nothing wrong with Palantir, and it just needs “to cool off in order to grow into its market capitalization.”

“Sure, there are indeed some stocks that are visibly overvalued, and when you pull them apart, many of these valuations can be justified, some can’t,” he said. “I think the Magnificent Seven can be justified on the pace of the growth that’s ahead of them. Same, ultimately, with Palantir.”

Nearly a million workers are unpaid during shutdown, Wall Street can't ignore it, says Jim Cramer

Jim Cramer’s Guide to Investing

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Bitcoin retail investor at ‘max desperation,’ says Bitwise CIO, but crypto winter not coming

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Bitcoin retail investor at 'max desperation,' says Bitwise CIO, but crypto winter not coming

'I think crypto market is close to a bottom': Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan

Bitcoin‘s fall below $100,000, its lowest level since June, has sparked fears that the worst is yet to come, another so-called crypto winter (a prolonged bear market in cryptocurrencies) that the market wrestles with every time digital currencies sell off hard in a short period of time.

But Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan says that while the retail investor is in “max desperation” mode, he sees that as a reason to bet that a bottoming in crypto prices may materialize sooner rather than later. With Wall Street institutional investor and financial advisor support for bitcoin, and growth in crypto ETFs, he is even willing to go out on a limb and say that amid the heavy selling a new record high for bitcoin before the end of the year isn’t unreasonable.

“It’s almost a tale of two markets,” he said on CNBC’s “Crypto World” on Tuesday. “Crypto retail is in max desperation. We’ve seen leverage blowouts. … the market for sort of crypto native retail is just more depressed than I’ve ever seen it,” he said.

But Hougan believes more crypto trading will continue to shift into an institutionally driven market, “and interestingly, that market is still bullish,” he said.

“When I go out and speak to institutions or financial advisors, they’re still excited to allocate to an asset class that if you pan back and look over the course of a year, is still delivering very strong returns. So my view of the market is we have to get through this retail flush out. We have to hit bottom from a sentiment perspective. I think we’re very close to that,” he added.

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Price of bitcoin and ether over the past year.

The boom in crypto exchange-traded fund launches, including iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) and Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) is changing the investor composition, and while week-to-week flows into these ETFs have slowed since the second quarter of the year, “we continue to see strong inflows into bitcoin,” Hougan said.

He expects more support to materialize for crypto into the end of the year among financial advisors who will look past the current dip and see an “opportunity to show their clients that they understand where this market is going.”

Bitwise’s own Solana staking ETF (BSOL) brought in over $400 million in flows in its first week, he said, though it has sold off sharply in the recent crypto downturn, with a near 20% loss since its Oct. 28 debut.

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This chart is showing BSOL 5 days

Last week, Strategy CEO Michael Saylor told CNBC he thinks bitcoin could reach $150,000 by the end of the year, one among several recent bullish calls on crypto that for now at least look ill-timed. But Hougan said he doesn’t think it’s an outlandish call even as bitcoin hovers near a six-month low.

“I think bitcoin could easily end the year at new all-time highs,” Hougan said. “So that means getting north of about $125,000 up to $130,000. Whether we’ll get all the way to $150,000, we’ll have to see.”

“I do think the sellers are nearing exhaustion and the buyers are still relatively hungry. And when those two things sort of cross paths, again, I think we could end the year close to or at new all-time highs. And if we’re lucky, we’ll get to Saylor’s target as well,” he said.

Institutional investors, whom Hougan described as “more maybe even keeled about what’s going on at a fundamental level in crypto” will start to drive the market forward. “But we do have to finish this washout of retail sentiment … I think we’re closer to the end of that than the beginning, but … there always could be a little bit more downside.”

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Trump renominates Musk ally Jared Isaacman to run NASA months after withdrawal

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Trump renominates Musk ally Jared Isaacman to run NASA months after withdrawal

Jared Isaacman, U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to be administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) testifies during a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 9, 2025.

Ken Cedeno | Reuters

President Donald Trump has renominated Jared Isaacman to run NASA after pulling his prior nomination months ago due to what the president called a “thorough review of prior associations.”

“Jared’s passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new Space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.

Isaacman, who is friends with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, was originally picked to lead NASA in December, before Trump had even taken office. Isaacman is a billionaire who founded payments company Shift4 and has led two private spaceflights.

But Trump pulled the nomination in late May after a spat between the president and Musk, who had been leading a White House effort to slash the size of the federal government. Trump said at the time that he was withdrawing the pick because of Isaacman’s past associations, though he didn’t specify what those were. Some reports have suggested that it was a reference to Isaacman’s prior donations to Democrats.

Days after the withdrawal, Isaacman told Shift4 investors in a letter that his “brief stint in politics was a thrilling experience.” He also said that he was resigning as CEO of Shift4, which he founded in 1999 at age 16, and would assume the role of executive chairman. He had been planning to leave the company if his nomination was confirmed by the Senate. But it never got that far.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been running NASA as interim head since July.

Isaacman still must go through the Senate confirmation process. The federal government has been shut down since the beginning of October, but the Senate is still able to confirm presidential nominees.

WATCH: Trump renominates Jared Isaacman to run NASA

Pres. Trump re-nominates fmr. Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman to be head of NASA

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