Dutch minister opposes US bill restricting chip equipment sales to China

Dutch Trade Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma visited Washington this week to meet with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and members of Congress to oppose the MATCH Act, a bill that would bar Chinese chipmakers from accessing Western semiconductor equipment. The bill would particularly affect ASML, the Netherlands-based company that is Europe’s most valuable and the sole global maker of lithography machines used for cutting-edge AI chips. Sjoerdsma told Bloomberg after the meetings that it is exceptional for him to come to Washington to outline concerns to Congress, noting the stakes for the Netherlands may be very high. China accounts for 19% of ASML’s net system sales. The MATCH Act would extend existing controls to ban ASML’s deep ultraviolet immersion machines, in addition to the long-standing ban on its most advanced extreme ultraviolet tools reaching China. ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet told TechCrunch in May that China currently buys older-generation deep ultraviolet tools first shipped about a decade ago, which the MATCH Act would also restrict. The bill, introduced in April, has not yet faced a full House or Senate vote and would likely need to be folded into a larger package to pass, according to Bloomberg.

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Sources: TechCrunch