Netherlands denies U.S. pressure on chip export policy

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Friday that the Netherlands did not feel pressure from the United States to adopt new U.S. rules to further limit exports of semiconductor technology to China.

The Netherlands, lobbied by the Trump administration, has since 2019 denied its largest company, ASML, a license to export its most advanced machinery to China, raising fears it is under renewed pressure to impose further restrictions.

U.S. officials have said they expect the Netherlands to impose rules similar to those imposed on U.S. companies by Washington in October 2022, aimed at limiting China's ability to make its own chips.

Rutte will travel to Washington next week to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden to discuss security and trade issues, including the export of chipmaking tools.

"This is an area where we are world players and we can have discussions about it, not immediately talking about ... 'under pressure'. I have no such experience at all," Rutte mentioned.

ASML, which dominates the market for lithography systems used to create chip circuits, sold about 2 billion euros ($2.17 billion) of old equipment to China in 2021, which is currently off limits. New U.S. rules could affect sales in a third of those markets, it said.

"We're talking about preventing (without naming any particular third country) modern chips from being used in weapons systems. Or you make yourself dependent on other countries' technology," Rutte told a weekly news conference.

"This dialogue is happening intensively in the EU and the US," he said.