By Toby Sterling<\/p>\n
AMSTERDAM, May 14 (Reuters) – The Netherlands has objected to a proposed U.S. law that could further restrict exports to China \u200cby Dutch chipmaking equipment maker ASML, the Dutch government said in \u200cwritten answers to questions from parliament this week.<\/p>\n
The answers by trade minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, dated May \u200b12, were reported earlier by the South China Morning Post.<\/p>\n
Sjoerdsma said Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten and other senior officials had raised concerns about the proposed U.S. MATCH Act during a visit to the United States in April by the \u200cDutch king and queen, which \u2060included meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
The proposed law seeks to force U.S. allies to follow Washington\u2019s export controls as \u2060part of efforts to curb China\u2019s ability to make advanced semiconductors. Equipment made by ASML, Europe\u2019s most valuable company, is named in the legislation proposed last month.<\/p>\n
Chinese \u200bofficials are \u200balso expected to raise objections during \u200bTrump\u2019s visit this week.<\/p>\n
The Netherlands has \u200cpreviously aligned with the United States on restrictions that prevent ASML from selling its most advanced equipment to Chinese customers, citing security concerns.<\/p>\n
But Sjoerdsma said the Dutch government opposed the broad scope of the proposed U.S. law, warning it could hurt the market position of semiconductor companies, including Dutch firms. A \u200cthird of ASML’s sales last year were \u200bto customers in China.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s main objection was \u200bthe bill\u2019s \u201cextraterritorial\u201d nature, he said, \u200breferring to provisions that allow Washington to impose restrictions on \u200ccompanies outside the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Netherlands\u2019 \u200bstarting point is that \u200bevery country is responsible for its own laws,\u201d Sjoerdsma said.<\/p>\n
ASML dominates the market for lithography tools, which use lasers to create the circuitry \u200bof chips.<\/p>\n
Sjoerdsma said the \u200cU.S. rules \u201ccould result in companies no longer being allowed to perform maintenance \u200bor support, even for machines already delivered”, disrupting international commerce.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Toby Sterling; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Toby Sterling AMSTERDAM, May 14 (Reuters) – The Netherlands has objected to a proposed U.S. law that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[65,87,339,6392,9671,1653,5835,9670,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-11548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-asml","8":"tag-asml","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-dutch-government","11":"tag-president-donald-trump","12":"tag-proposed-law","13":"tag-semiconductor-companies","14":"tag-sjoerd-sjoerdsma","15":"tag-south-china-morning-post","16":"tag-the-netherlands"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}