Netherlands lobbies US to drop chip curbs targeting ASML sales

The Netherlands is lobbying the US to not expand export controls on semiconductor equipment, a move that would constrain ASML’s ability to sell to China.

Dutch Trade Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma on June 23 met with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and lawmakers in Washington, where Congress has been debating the so-called MATCH Act, which would bar Chinese chipmakers from accessing the equipment.

“It’s exceptional that I’m coming here to broadly outline our concerns to Congress,” Sjoerdsma said in an interview with Bloomberg after the meetings. “We’re doing that because those concerns are significant and because the stakes for the Netherlands may be very high.”

The Dutch government is keen to protect Veldhoven, Netherlands-based ASML, which is Europe’s most valuable company.

China is the company’s most important market and accounted for 19 per cent of net system sales in the first quarter, down from 36 per cent in the previous quarter.

Among the most significant expansions in the US bill would be curbs on all of ASML’s deep ultraviolet immersion lithography, or immersion DUV, machines.

That would build on existing controls of the most-advanced extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV, machines – which have never been permitted for export to China – as well as some DUV measures imposed by the Netherlands.

The Dutch government opposes the bill, criticising its extraterritorial character as it is imposing restrictions on another country’s sovereign trade policies.

“We want to prevent sensitive technology from ending up where it could harm our security. But that is something that must happen on a voluntary basis,” Sjoerdsma said.

“And if that involves coercion across borders and across the Atlantic, well, that’s a matter for us to decide as a country, so we find that truly unfortunate.”

ASML is the only maker of the most sophisticated lithography machines necessary to make chips that power everything from electric vehicles to artificial intelligence accelerators and military gear.

The company, whose customers include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung Electronics, has in recent years been caught in the cross-hairs of the US government’s regulations aimed at countering China’s chip advances on the grounds of national security.

Sjoerdsma said the visit on June 23 would be followed by a series of meetings in Washington that the Dutch government will use to press US officials to reconsider the MATCH Act. BLOOMBERG