Dutch Trade Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma visited Washington this week to meet with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and members of Congress. The purpose was to oppose the MATCH Act, a bill that would bar Chinese chipmakers from accessing Western semiconductor equipment. This legislation would hit ASML especially hard. The company is based in the Netherlands and is Europe’s most valuable firm. It is the only maker in the world of the sophisticated lithography machines used to produce advanced AI chips.
Sjoerdsma told Bloomberg that the stakes for the Netherlands may be very high. China accounts for 19% of ASML’s net system sales. The MATCH Act would extend curbs to ASML’s deep ultraviolet immersion machines on top of the long-standing ban on its extreme ultraviolet tools reaching China. ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet noted that what China can currently buy are older-generation deep ultraviolet tools. The bill, introduced in April, has not yet faced a full House or Senate vote. It would likely need to be folded into a larger package to pass.
- China currently purchases older-generation deep ultraviolet tools shipped about a decade ago
- The MATCH Act targets deep ultraviolet immersion machines in addition to EUV tools
- Existing controls already prevent the sale of the most advanced extreme ultraviolet tools to China
