ASML China sales are at the centre of an increasingly pointed diplomatic confrontation between the Netherlands and Washington, after Dutch Trade Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma flew to the US capital this week to lobby Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and members of Congress against legislation that could sever the Dutch chipmaking giant from one of its largest markets.
The bill in question is the MATCH Act (H.R. 8170), introduced on 2 April 2026 by Congressman Michael Baumgartner of Washington state and cleared by committee on 22 April. It would extend US export controls to cover ASML’s deep ultraviolet (DUV) immersion machines, on top of the existing ban on the company’s most advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) tools reaching China. China currently accounts for 19% of ASML’s net system sales.
ASML, headquartered in the Netherlands, is Europe’s most valuable company and the sole maker worldwide of the lithography machines used to produce cutting-edge AI chips. The DUV tools now in the MATCH Act’s crosshairs are, as ASML chief executive Christophe Fouquet explained to TechCrunch in May, older-generation gear first shipped roughly a decade ago. The bill would render even that equipment off-limits to Chinese buyers.
The Revenue Exposure Behind ASML’s China Sales
The financial stakes are not abstract. MLQ News reports ASML shipped approximately €5.6 billion worth of equipment to China in 2025, with the DUV machines targeted by the legislation representing roughly one-fifth of the company’s expected annual revenue.
The broader business context makes those numbers harder to absorb. According to ASML’s own Q4 2025 results, the company posted full-year 2025 total net sales of €32.7 billion, up 15.6% from €28.3 billion the prior year, with net income of €9.6 billion and a gross margin of 52.8%. Its end-of-2025 backlog stood at €38.8 billion.
Yet ASML had already signalled difficulty ahead on the China front before the MATCH Act entered the picture. As CNBC reported from the company’s guidance, ASML expects China sales to decline significantly in 2026 compared with 2024 and 2025 levels, even as it guided full-year 2026 net sales of between €34 billion and €39 billion with a gross margin of 51% to 53%. The MATCH Act, if passed, would accelerate and deepen that trajectory.
A Bipartisan Bill With Senate Backing
The legislation has cross-party momentum in Congress. The House version carries Baumgartner’s co-sponsor Congressman Rich McCormick, who said the bill would ‘close loopholes, create a level playing field for U.S. and allied toolmakers, and ensure the next decade of growth in chip manufacturing happens in the United States and allied countries, not China.’
A companion Senate version was introduced by Senators Andy Kim (Democrat, New Jersey), Pete Ricketts (Republican, Nebraska), and Jim Risch (Republican, Idaho), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Kim also serves as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance.
The bill has not yet faced a full House or Senate vote. Bloomberg has reported it would likely need to be folded into a larger legislative package to pass, which means its fate is tied to broader congressional negotiations rather than standing on its own.
The Netherlands Draws a Line
‘It’s exceptional that I’m coming here to broadly outline our concerns to Congress,’ Sjoerdsma told Bloomberg after his meetings. ‘The stakes for the Netherlands may be very high.’
He went further in remarks reported by Export Compliance Daily, warning that if US export-control expansion involved ‘coercion across borders and across the Atlantic,’ that would be ‘a matter for us to decide as a country,’ calling such a prospect ‘truly unfortunate.’
Sjoerdsma also signed the Pax Silica declaration on the same day as his Washington meetings, a US-led initiative designed to coordinate semiconductor and AI supply chains among allies to reduce dependence on China. The dual move illustrates the Netherlands’ position: willing to align with Western technology strategy in principle, resistant to unilateral American diktat over a Dutch corporate asset.
Whether Congress can navigate that distinction will depend on whether the MATCH Act finds a legislative vehicle capable of carrying it. If it does, ASML’s China sales will face a statutory ceiling, not merely a diplomatic one, and Amsterdam will have run out of meetings to request.
