Dutch Trade Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma visited Washington this week to meet with Trade Secretary Howard Lutnick and members of Congress to oppose the PARTY Lawa bill that would prevent Chinese chipmakers from accessing Western semiconductor equipment and would especially affect ASML.
ASML, headquartered in the Netherlands, is Europe’s most valuable company and the world’s only manufacturer of sophisticated lithography machines used to make next-generation AI chips.
“It is exceptional that he comes here to fully present our concerns to Congress,” Sjoerdsma he told Bloomberg after the meetings. “The stakes for the Netherlands may be very high.”
China accounts for 19% of ASML’s net system sales. The MATCH Act would go beyond existing controls, expanding restrictions on ASML’s deep ultraviolet immersion machines on top of the longstanding ban on its most advanced extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, tools from reaching China.
As ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet said told TechCrunch As of May, what China can currently buy are older-generation deep ultraviolet tools (equipment first shipped about a decade ago), the same machines that the MATCH Act would now relegate as off-limits.
The bill, introduced in April, has not yet been voted on by the full House or Senate; Bloomberg notes that it would likely need to be folded into a larger package for it to pass.
