Now you have to explain the limitations they also included on Portugal (but not on Spain). Portugal being one of the most pro USA European countries and a NATO founding member.
Or Lithuania, arguably[0] the most anti-China member of NATO. *That's* the NATO ally (!) they chose to blacklist, with their anti-China chip export ban?
Also countries like Lithuania are not blacklisted. They are still allowed to buy GPUs/etc. below a certain cap. Realistically their domestic demand is nowhere near the cap. So what's' the problem exactly? (unless they want to resell those chips to third parties)
The problem is putting US allies like Lithuania and Poland in the same tier as communist countries like Laos or Vietnam.
I'd put it another way, if demand is below the cap, then why have the cap? Why destroy relations for free? It's not like you can't do something if they are found to sell chips to China.
So that companies in less reliable countries like Lithuania couldn't purchase high numbers of GPU and resell them to Russia/China/etc. through countries like Kazakhstan etc. (like they do now with other products).
> if demand is below the cap, then why have the cap?
It might be for Lithuania. But the same 50,000 cap applies to Poland.
Anyway:
> Individual companies headquartered in tier two countries—for [...] can access significantly higher limits if they apply for their own national validated end user status. That process involves making verifiable security commitments, [...]. If a company obtains this status, its chip imports won’t count toward the country’s overall maximum cap
This isn't a problem. See article [EN][0]. Simply put we are significantly below the cap. If somehow we would manage to hit the cap it definitely should be an alarm for investigation. I feel more folks are unhappy because EU was divided into two parts with this.
I am not offering any specific or real life explanations. Just highlighting that there are many possible theoretical explanations that are reasonable but not apparent to the public. It may even just be that they started with a small whitelist that will expand over time.
