President Trump exercised his authority under the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) process on September 13, 2017, to block a proposed acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor Corporation by China Venture Capital Fund Corporation Limited. CFIUS, an interagency committee chaired by the Treasury Department, reviews foreign investments in U.S. companies for potential national security risks. Rather than allowing the transaction to proceed or requiring a restructuring of the deal, Trump issued a formal order prohibiting the acquisition entirely, citing concerns about semiconductor technology and defense applications as the basis for the national security determination.

The blocked transaction directly affected Lattice Semiconductor, a publicly traded semiconductor manufacturer based in Oregon that designs and produces integrated circuits used in communications infrastructure and other commercial applications. The order prevented the Chinese fund from acquiring the company and maintaining it under foreign ownership, effectively preserving U.S. control of the firm and its intellectual property. Shareholders expecting the transaction to close faced the loss of a sale opportunity, while Lattice employees and operations remained subject to American regulatory jurisdiction and ownership structures.

This action reflected a broader Trump administration posture toward Chinese investment in critical U.S. technology sectors, part of a pattern of heightened scrutiny and restrictions on foreign capital flows into sensitive industries. While the related actions in the archive document later military escalations and Iran-focused measures, this semiconductor block represents an earlier manifestation of the administration's approach to perceived strategic vulnerabilities, particularly regarding advanced manufacturing and defense-adjacent technologies. The CFIUS mechanism has long existed, but Trump's administration deployed it with notable frequency and expansiveness during his first term.

The blocking order became effective immediately and faced no successful legal challenge, though some business groups and foreign investors criticized the decision as protectionist. Congress retained its authority to review CFIUS cases but did not intervene to overturn the administration's determination. Reversing such a decision would require either a new presidential directive or a significant shift in how CFIUS evaluates foreign semiconductor investments, standards that remained unchanged throughout the Trump administration and beyond.