US Holds Back DeepSeek Trade Blacklist

What did Reuters report about the US Entity List?

The Trump administration has quietly held back more than 100 Chinese companies from the Commerce Department's trade blacklist, Reuters reported on June 16–17, 2026. The companies — flagged as national security risks — were approved for listing by a cross-agency committee but never formally published. The pause has now stretched past six months.

The Entity List is a Commerce Department roster that bars US companies from exporting goods, software, and technology to listed firms without a license. Those license applications are typically denied.

Which companies are affected?

Reuters, as reported by World Journal, named two companies explicitly:

• DeepSeek — the Chinese AI startup whose low-cost models shook the tech world
• CXMT (長鑫存儲 / Changxin Memory Technologies) — China's top memory chip manufacturer, already designated a Chinese military company by the Pentagon under the Biden administration

Beyond those two, at least 75 Chinese entities in the pending list operate in advanced semiconductor production, semiconductor equipment manufacturing, or AI model development, according to sources cited by Reuters.

Additional companies were flagged for:

• Supplying drones to Russia (some recovered in Poland in September of last year)
• Selling restricted Nvidia chips to Chinese universities
• Manufacturing drones and robot dogs for the Chinese military

Why hasn't the US published the updated Entity List?

Sources told Reuters that since late 2025, Jeffrey Kessler — the Commerce Department Under Secretary for Industry and Security — has favored holding off on new Chinese listings to avoid worsening US-China relations. The Trump administration is trying to prevent further tension with Beijing.

Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), which administers the Entity List, did not directly answer why the list had gone without updates. BIS stated it uses "many policy and enforcement tools, including the Entity List… every day… to ensure we are going after bad actors."

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Here's what we know so far: the committee process worked as designed — agencies reviewed and approved companies — but the final publication step stalled at Commerce.

How long has the Entity List gone without an update?

The US has not added new names to the Entity List since October 2025. According to HK01's report citing Reuters, CSIS global supply chain researcher Philip Luck called this the longest gap in Entity List updates in more than a decade.

Luck described the Entity List as a "whack-a-mole" tool — one that must keep running to stay effective. Without new additions, he warned, US technology could continue flowing to adversaries and ultimately be used against US interests.

Former Commerce export enforcement official Kevin Kurland told Reuters the delay shows that the Trump administration's trade policy has overridden this national security tool.

What are the national security concerns tied to DeepSeek specifically?

A senior US State Department official told Reuters that DeepSeek had assisted China's military and intelligence operations. The official also said DeepSeek attempted to illegally obtain advanced US chips through shell companies in Southeast Asia.

Two US AI companies have separately raised alarms about DeepSeek:

DeepSeek did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment. CXMT also did not respond.

Who decides whether a company gets added to the Entity List?

The decision runs through a cross-agency committee. Members include officials from:

• The Commerce Department
• The Department of Defense
• The Department of Energy
• The State Department
• The Treasury Department (in some cases)

Sources told Reuters the committee had already cleared several companies for listing. Commerce simply has not announced them.

This process matters for builders and founders tracking US export controls — an Entity List designation cuts off a company from US suppliers entirely, with no easy workaround.

What does this mean for the broader US-China tech rivalry?

The US and China are locked in competition across technology, trade, and national security. Washington has used tariffs and export controls to constrain Beijing. China, in turn, controls supplies of rare earth minerals needed for defense, automotive, and chip industries, the sources note.

The DeepSeek national security concerns sit inside a wider pattern of Chinese AI labs pushing aggressively against US competitors. OpenAI's warnings to Congress and Anthropic's findings about Claude both point to active attempts to extract US AI capabilities — a dynamic that OpenAI's own financials show are under serious competitive pressure.

The Perplexity revenue trajectory and the broader US AI industry's growth make the stakes of these export control decisions concrete for every American AI company.

The most important confirmed fact: the Commerce Department's Entity List has not been updated since October 2025, and a cross-agency committee has already approved more than 100 companies — including DeepSeek and CXMT — for addition. Those approvals remain unpublished.