Bloomberg
The Netherlands is lobbying the US to not expand export controls on semiconductor equipment, a move that would constrain ASML Holding NV’s ability to sell to China.Dutch Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Sjoerd Sjoerdsma on Tuesday met with US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and lawmakers in Washington, where US 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 logo of ASML Holding NV is pictured outside the company’s offices in Veldhoven, Netherlands on March 24.
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 percent of net system sales in the first quarter of this year, down from 36 percent 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.
