Dutch Trade Minister Sjoerd Soerdsma visited Washington this week and met with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and members of Congress to protest. match actA bill that would block Chinese chip makers from accessing Western semiconductor equipment, and a bill that would hit ASML particularly hard.
ASML, based in the Netherlands, is Europe’s most valuable company and the world’s only manufacturer of the sophisticated lithography machines used to make cutting-edge AI chips.
“It is extraordinary that I am coming here to comprehensively outline our concerns before Congress,” Soedersma. told Bloomberg After the meetings. “The stakes could be very high for the Netherlands.”
China accounts for 19% of ASML’s net system sales. The MATCH Act would go even further than existing controls, banning ASML’s deep ultraviolet immersion machines in addition to a long-standing ban on its most advanced extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, devices reaching China.
Christophe Fouquet as ASML CEO told TechCrunch In May, China can currently purchase older generation deep ultraviolet equipment — gear first shipped nearly a decade ago — the same machines that the MATCH Act will now put out of bounds.
The bill, introduced in April, has not yet faced a full House or Senate vote; Bloomberg says it would probably need to be folded into a larger package to pass.
