China Opens Antitrust Investigation Into US Chipmaker Qualcomm

Oct 11, 2025 - 09:57

Updated: 8 months ago

China Opens Antitrust Investigation Into US Chipmaker Qualcomm

The Chinese communist regime has launched an antitrust investigation into Qualcomm, targeting another U.S. chip giant amid ongoing trade tension with Washington.

The regime’s State Administration of Market Supervision said in a brief statement on Oct. 10 that the probe is related to Qualcomm’s acquisition of Israeli vehicle chipmaker Autotalks, a deal unveiled four months ago.

The regime’s regulator said it would examine potential breach of the country’s anti-monopoly law in the takeover.

Shares of Qualcomm, a major supplier of smartphone chips, were down 2.8 percent in U.S. premarket trading.

Qualcomm said in June that it had completed a deal to buy Autotalks, a company specializing in developing chips to improve road safety through vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication technologies, enabling cars to interact with each other and the surrounding environment. Qualcomm, based in San Diego, California, didn’t disclose the size of the transaction.

In the Oct. 10 notice, the Chinese regime’s antitrust authorities didn’t say what Qualcomm might have done wrong, or explain why it was raising the issue months after the acquisition deal was completed.

China’s antitrust law allows its regulatory authorities to impose fines of up to 10 percent of targeted companies’ revenue from the previous year.

A spokesperson for Qualcomm told The Epoch Times that the company is fully cooperating with the Chinese antitrust authorities on this matter.

“Qualcomm is committed to supporting the development and growth of our customers and partners,” the spokesperson said in a statement via email.

It is not the first time the Chinese regime has taken aim at a U.S. semiconductor manufacturer amid tensions with Washington. The Chinese market regulator said in mid-September that it had decided to extend a probe into Nvidia, after a preliminary review suggested the U.S. chipmaker breached the country’s anti-monopoly law concerning its 2020 acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli chip designer.

The investigation into Nvidia was launched shortly after the United States expanded its export controls on semiconductor technology to China in December 2024. The Biden administration blocked the communist regime’s access to advanced U.S. chips and placed 140 Chinese entities on a trade blacklist.

In response, the Chinese regime banned the export of critical raw minerals used in semiconductor production to the United States. Meanwhile, four major Chinese industry associations told domestic companies that U.S. chips are considered “no longer safe” to buy.

The scrutiny of Qualcomm comes at a time when Beijing and Washington are in a trade truce that is set to expire on Nov. 10.

China’s commerce ministry announced on Oct. 9 that five more rare earth metals, along with related products, were added to the export control list. The metals used in the production of advanced chips and military equipment are a major point of contention in the ongoing U.S.–China trade war.

U.S. President Donald Trump said after a phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping last month that they agreed to meet face-to-face at the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

However, on Oct. 10, Trump said that China has become “hostile” and threatened to cancel the planned meeting.

“I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

He indicated that the United States may impose new tariffs on China.

“One of the Policies that we are calculating at this moment is a massive increase of Tariffs on Chinese products coming into the United States of America,” he wrote. “There are many other countermeasures that are, likewise, under serious consideration.”