U.S. Will Ease Restrictions on Computer Chips From Japan

The Commerce Department has notified U.S. makers and users of semiconductors that it will be more flexible in its treatment of alleged dumping of memory chips by Japanese companies, it was announced Wednesday.

The changes are designed to avoid unintended situations in which the Commerce Department rules required Japanese companies to price their chips artificially high.

Japanese chip makers will be allowed to spread out their costs of introducing a new kind of chip over an “appropriate” length of time instead of having to raise prices enough to recoup all their costs in the first three months, the Commerce Department said.

Also, chip makers will also be allowed to spread out their costs over longer than three months when they start up a new line to produce an existing product line.

The changes apply to the two kinds of chips covered by a 1986 anti-dumping agreement between the United States and Japan, namely dynamic random access memories, or DRAMs, and erasable, programmable read-only memories, or EPROMs.

The Commerce Department informed the Semiconductor Industry Assn. and the American Electronics Assn. of its decisions in a letter Tuesday, and those organizations issued statements on Wednesday supporting the decisions.

The government changes would mainly benefit companies that use chips, which have suffered from the unintended price spikes caused by the old Commerce Department rules.

The Semiconductor Industry Assn., which consists of chip producers, went along with the American Electronics Assn. in requesting the changes in a June 21 letter to the government because of an interest in creating harmony in the electronics industry.

Allen Moore, the undersecretary of Commerce for international trade, said in his letter that “the unified approach of your two organizations is an integral element of developing sound public policy approaches.”