LETTERS: Louisiana Manufacturing Depends on Keeping China's Hand Off Our Chips

I work in manufacturing here in Louisiana, and we've seen this movie before. In 1990, America made 40 percent of the world's semiconductors. Today it's 12 percent. We let that slip away the same way we let solar panel and battery production slip away — by assuming free markets would sort it out, while China's state-directed economy simply took the ground we gave up.

Now Congress has a chance to not repeat that mistake with AI chips, and some in Washington want to weaken export controls in the name of "free trade." I understand the instinct, but competition only works when both sides are playing the same game. China isn't. Its government directs capital to favored firms, shields intellectual property theft instead of punishing it, and treats every private-sector breakthrough as something it can claim for the state and the military. That's not a market. That's a rigged game, and American workers lose when we pretend otherwise.

Here's what critics of export controls get wrong: the two years after the first round of restrictions were some of the best on record for U.S. chip equipment suppliers. Customers outside China filled the gap fast. Strong controls don't hurt American manufacturing — they're what keeps trillions of dollars in AI infrastructure investment landing in places like Louisiana instead of overseas.

Congress should pass strong, permanent chip export controls and keep this industry, and these jobs, right here in America.

— Grant Gautreaux,