The Semiconductor Controls Adjusted to Limit Exports (SCALE) Act is a bill sponsored by Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), chair of the House Select Committee on China, that ties permissible US AI-chip exports to China to the performance of China's own domestic chips rather than to a fixed compute ratio. It permits US chip exports to China only up to 110% of the performance of the best chip China can manufacture domestically at scale, replacing Moolenaar's earlier proposal to cap Chinese aggregate AI compute at 10% of US compute capacity.
Status and timeline
The bill was introduced on April 15, 2026 as H.R. 8306 in the 119th Congress and referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (Source: congress.gov). The Select Committee on China announced it in a press release dated April 21, 2026, six days after introduction (Source: chinaselectcommittee.house.gov). As of the most recent reporting the bill had been introduced with no floor action. It is presented as a replacement for an earlier Moolenaar proposal, which would have capped Chinese aggregate AI compute at 10% of US compute capacity; the earlier proposal's specific date and bill number are not stated in the source.
Scope and key provisions
The earlier Moolenaar proposal set a fixed-ratio quantitative ceiling, capping Chinese aggregate AI compute at 10% of US compute capacity. The SCALE Act substitutes a performance-relative threshold: US chip exports to China are permitted only up to 110% of the performance of the best chip China can manufacture domestically at scale. The change reframes the export-control test from a quantity-based measure to one indexed to China's own manufacturing capability.
The mechanism proceeds in three steps. First, the "best chip China can manufacture domestically at scale" is defined; per the source this likely involves a process-node, die-size, and memory-bandwidth assessment. Second, that performance figure is multiplied by 1.1 to set the 110% ceiling. Third, US export of chips at or below that performance level is allowed and export above it is prohibited. The stated intent is that as China improves the capabilities of its domestic producers such as Huawei Ascend and SMIC, the US export ceiling rises automatically with them, which is meant to prevent US controls from being trivially circumvented while preserving a fixed-ratio US technological lead.
The sponsoring committee's description names the mechanism a rolling technical threshold (RTT) and supplies the scale qualifier the ratio depends on: exports are permitted up to 110 percent of the performance of chips an adversary "can already manufacture domestically at meaningful production levels which can be defined as at least 25 percent of their annual demand" (Source: chinaselectcommittee.house.gov). The 25 percent figure is the committee's own gloss on "at scale" rather than a formula stated in the bill's operative text.
Metrics and administration
The bill directs the Secretary of Commerce, in coordination with the Director of National Intelligence, to create and publicly release objective performance metrics on China's AI hardware capabilities. The named indicators are total processing power, interconnect bandwidth, and memory capacity, to be updated regularly (Source: chinaselectcommittee.house.gov). Trade press characterized the design as requiring Commerce to set annual public metrics and to cap exports at 110% of proven indigenous capability (Source: wttlonline.com). Publishing the threshold is the feature the sponsor advances as making the regime predictable to exporters; it also makes the US assessment of Chinese manufacturing capability a public document on a recurring schedule.
Additional constraints
Three constraints operate alongside the threshold (Source: chinaselectcommittee.house.gov):
- Aggregate share cap. A license application is subject to a presumption of denial if the export would cause adversary-controlled AI hardware to exceed five percent of the total US AI hardware base.
- Domestic-supply certification. Exports require certification that US supply chains and domestic demand will not be disrupted.
- Existing controls preserved. Exports falling below the rolling technical threshold remain subject to controls already in force, including restrictions on entities listed on the Commerce Department's Entity List.
Moolenaar framed the bill as ensuring "American companies never sell the best chips in the world to China" and as grounding export controls "in objective metrics" so as to give American business a level playing field while China "races to catch up" (Source: chinaselectcommittee.house.gov).
Reactions
The source frames the performance-relative design as potentially working in the opposite direction from the Thompson chip-precariousness critique, in that it decouples US export levels from absolute capability targets. Possible objections raised include that a 110% ceiling would not translate to a meaningful capability gap if China is improving rapidly; that the "at scale" qualifier is open to gaming, leaving unclear whether pilot production counts and what volume threshold applies; and that performance-relative caps could give China an incentive to under-report domestic chip-capability progress in order to keep US chip flows higher. The committee's 25-percent-of-annual-demand gloss supplies a volume threshold for the second objection, though it does not resolve how pilot or subsidized production would be counted, and the under-reporting objection cuts against the metrics regime directly, since the published Commerce assessment is what the threshold moves with.
Related
The SCALE Act sits alongside other AI export-control measures. BIS Framework for AI Diffusion — Interim Final Rule (RESCINDED) is the executive-branch counterpart on AI export controls, and Presidential Determination 2026-10 (Defense Production Act Section 303 — AI Grid Components) is a Section 303 invocation treating grid hardware as defense-essential. Export Controls (AI) is a planned concept page anchoring this debate.
Relationships
- related: John Moolenaar
- related: House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party
- related: Export Controls (AI)
- related: Nvidia & TSMC — AI Compute Infrastructure
- related: Huawei — Ascend AI Accelerators
- related: SMIC — Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation
- related: BIS Framework for AI Diffusion — Interim Final Rule (RESCINDED)
- related: AI Promise and Chip Precariousness — Ben Thompson (Stratechery, February 2025)
- supersedes: Moolenaar's earlier "10% cap" proposal (introduced earlier in 2026; specific date and bill number not stated in source)