A Dutch Chipmaker’s Balancing Act Between Washington And Beijing

On 7 July, Dutch Trade Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma arrived at China's Ministry of Commerce with 17 companies behind him. Chipmaking giant ASML was one of them. By day's end, the two governments had agreed on a China-Netherlands Business Council.

Two weeks earlier, the same minister was in Washington D.C., warning U.S. Congress that a bill on their desks could gut that European company's business in China.

The Multilateral Alignment of Technology Controls on Hardware Act – MATCH – was introduced on April 2 by Senators Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Pete Ricketts (R-NE) and Andy Kim (D-NJ). It would bar sales of ASML's deep ultraviolet immersion machines anywhere in China, blacklist SMIC, Huawei, Hua Hong, CXMT and YMTC in U.S. law, and stop ASML engineers servicing machines already running in Chinese plants.

Then the clock. Within 150 days of the bill becoming law, the Netherlands and Japan would have to write the same rules themselves: refuse export licences for those machines to those customers, and end the service contracts on the installed ones.

If they don't, the U.S. Department of Commerce would extend the Foreign Direct Product Rule, which lets Washington control goods made anywhere in the world if they contain enough American technology. ASML's machines qualify: the light source in every system is built in San Diego by Cymer, which ASML bought in 2013. Washington could then block a Dutch-built machine from reaching a Chinese buyer.

None of this is settled. The bill has not become law, so the 150 days have not begun. Reuters reported in April that lawmakers had already dropped a nationwide ban on cryogenic etch tools, though the ASML restriction survived. In July senators attached MATCH to the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual must-pass military bill, through a manager's amendment — the usual route for measures that might not pass on their own. On July 14, it fell short of the 60 votes needed to open debate, 50-46.

"Cannot be determined by foreign timelines"

The Dutch response runs on two tracks. The first is about who decides. "As a matter of principle, the Netherlands strongly opposes the extraterritorial application of foreign legislation," Damla Duman, a spokesperson for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told International Business Times. On the deadline: "Dutch policy cannot be determined by foreign timelines or unilateral requirements."

That is not a refusal to tighten controls. The Netherlands has done so repeatedly since 2019, banning ASML's most advanced machines and licensing the tier below. Sjoerdsma argues controls work best when countries act out of conviction, not under rules written abroad.

The other track is building alternatives. In June, the Netherlands joined Pax Silica, a U.S. State Department supply-chain initiative.

"Pax Silica is not about export controls but focused on cooperation in technology and AI," Duman said. Controls belong in bodies like the Wassenaar Arrangement, "in which each country takes its own sovereign decisions."

Washington's case

Washington's security argument is not frivolous.

Chipmaking tools are a more durable chokepoint than the chips themselves, which go obsolete in a few years – the case Janet Egan and Michelle Nie of CNAS made in April.

The maintenance ban is the sharpest instrument: without ASML engineers and parts, analysts estimate China's most advanced chip plants could grind to a halt within a year.

American toolmakers have been restricted for years while allied suppliers kept selling to China. The asymmetry cuts both ways, though. In July, Under Secretary of Commerce Jeffrey Kessler told Congress that few of Nvidia's approved H200 shipments had reached China.

"ASML is not just a Dutch company, it is Europe's most valuable and strategically important company," said Frans-Paul van der Putten, a senior China and geopolitics expert affiliated with the Leiden Asia Centre.

MATCH, he said, "would also be a symbol of U.S. coercion of its European allies," and "coercion of allies eventually hollows out" America's ability to get them to follow.

The case that it won't hold

Beijing has done this before. Nexperia is a Nijmegen chipmaker, owned since 2019 by China's Wingtech, making the inexpensive chips that are used in the automotive sector.

Last September the Dutch government invoked the Goods Availability Act – powers unused since 1952 – to take control, citing serious governance failures. The intervention only became public on 12 October. Two days later China blocked exports from Nexperia's Chinese factories; carmakers on three continents hit shortages within weeks.

Rosaline Lantink, a Clingendael researcher who co-wrote the Netherlands chapter of Fragmented Europe, the June report from the European Think-tank Network on China, was direct.

"Given its sheer economic size and European countries' dependencies on China's economy, China is not afraid to leverage its position," she said.

Her chapter identifies a second vulnerability: communication. Those 12 silent days let Beijing frame the intervention as another European capital yielding to U.S. pressure, crowding out the government's case about mismanagement and knowledge transfer.

Van der Putten reads the retaliation risk as rising but conditional: "as long as Chinese companies have some access to ASML equipment and servicing, China has a strong incentive to maintain good relations."

That access is worth less every year. China was 41% of ASML's sales in 2024 and 33% in 2025; the company now guides to roughly 20%. In late July, news that state-backed Shanghai Aishengna had begun building immersion DUV machines sent ASML shares down 8% – though it aims at five machines this year against ASML's planned 130.

Asked how the MATCH Act plays out, Lantink would not guess: "It is too early to tell."

Dutch policy has been consistent since 2019, van der Putten said, a compromise between U.S. demands and ASML's commercial interests. If that changes, he expects MATCH to be the trigger, not Nexperia. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) switched his vote to no on July 14 so he could bring the defense bill back; whenever he does, the 150 days start the day it is signed.