A Bill Built for Chokepoints—and Coercion
When the House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced the Multilateral Alignment of Technology Controls on Hardware (MATCH) Act on April 22, 2026—part of what members called the largest export control markup in congressional history—it cleared one of Washington's most assertive moves in the global chip contest. Introduced with bipartisan backing spanning Rep. Michael Baumgartner, Sens. Pete Ricketts and Andy Kim, and co-sponsored by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, H.R. 8170 targets what US policymakers see as the last significant gap in semiconductor export controls: ASML's deep ultraviolet (DUV) immersion lithography machines.
The security rationale is real and worth taking seriously. DUV immersion lithography enables the advanced chips powering AI systems, military guidance, and telecommunications infrastructure—and China cannot yet replicate these machines domestically. The five Chinese companies explicitly named in the MATCH Act as "covered facilities"—CXMT, Hua Hong, Huawei, SMIC, and YMTC—are using ASML equipment to compress their timeline to self-sufficiency. Cutting off not just new machine sales but also servicing and software updates to existing Chinese installations would apply a meaningful brake on that progression, and lawmakers can point to a genuine strategic logic.
But the MATCH Act does not stop at restricting US exports. It requires allied nations—primarily the Netherlands and Japan—to align their national export control policies with American standards within 150 days, or face unilateral enforcement via an expanded Foreign Direct Product Rule. The FDPR mechanism claims US jurisdiction over any product anywhere in the world that incorporates American technology or software, regardless of who manufactured it or where. That provision is where The Hague drew the line.
The Dutch Response: Formal Protest, Royal Visit, No Consensus
Dutch Trade Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma confirmed that the Netherlands had formally communicated its objections—specifically targeting the bill's extraterritorial provisions—to both members of Congress and the US government. The concerns were reinforced during King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima's visit to Washington in April 2026. Prime Minister Jetten identified ASML export controls as "one of the main reasons" for the trip. The talks were described, in the careful language of diplomacy, as "constructive but without consensus."
The Dutch objection rests on a fundamental principle: export control decisions belong to the exporting nation. The Wassenaar Arrangement—the 42-member multilateral regime governing dual-use technology since 1996—explicitly reserves the "sole responsibility" for transfer decisions to each participating state. The MATCH Act's 150-day ultimatum inverts that principle, substituting US statute for multilateral agreement and threatening to invoke the FDPR against a NATO ally.
What makes the Netherlands' position credible is its track record. In September 2023, the Dutch government independently added ASML's TWINSCAN NXT:1970i and NXT:1980i DUV immersion systems to a national control list requiring case-by-case government licensing. In January 2025, Minister Reinette Klever announced a second expansion—effective April 1, 2025—covering measurement and inspection equipment used in advanced semiconductor production. "We find it important that we retain control over which technology reaches whose hands," Klever stated, explicitly invoking sovereign authority over export decisions. This is not a government resisting chip controls; it is a government insisting on making its own.
The Financial Stakes—and the Strategic Paradox
ASML's exposure makes the stakes concrete. China represented approximately 33% of ASML's system sales in 2025, against total revenues of €32.7 billion. The company had already projected that share declining to roughly 20% in 2026 under existing controls. A full ban on DUV equipment and servicing—including for machines already installed in Chinese fabs—could reduce ASML's revenues by 14-15% and operating income by 16-17%, according to Bank of America scenario analysis.
The servicing ban deserves particular attention. Machines in Chinese facilities require ongoing calibration, software updates, and parts. Cutting that off degrades existing installations over time—but this is a one-time lever. Once exercised, the leverage is spent. China's incentive to accelerate domestic alternatives intensifies, and the US loses whatever influence accompanies continued commercial dependence on ASML equipment.
A CSIS analysis from May 2026 made this paradox explicit. China's December 2025 "50 percent rule"—requiring Chinese fabs to source half their equipment from domestic suppliers—was itself partly a response to prior rounds of US export pressure. Stricter controls may deepen Beijing's indigenization drive rather than halt it. The analysis also noted that disrupting Chinese memory producers CXMT and YMTC, who supply global markets, could amplify memory price pressure "across devices and enterprise servers" precisely when US AI infrastructure needs affordable compute memory.
Previous rounds of US extraterritorial pressure have already produced collateral damage. When Washington pushed the Netherlands on a separate affiliates rule in 2025, the resulting Dutch intervention in chipmaker Nexperia triggered Chinese retaliation that caused, per the CSIS assessment, "widespread supply chain disruptions, including shutdowns at Honda facilities in Mexico." Extraterritorial mandates imposed on allies carry costs that travel far beyond the semiconductor sector.
What Effective Allied Coordination Requires
The MATCH Act's core strategic objective—denying China access to DUV chokepoint equipment—is defensible. The mechanism for achieving it is not. The Bureau of Industry and Security, which would implement the ally-compliance provisions, has experienced significant institutional strain: restricted engagement with Wassenaar meetings and, per CSIS, staff departures that have weakened its capacity for complex plurilateral diplomacy. Legislative mandates do not substitute for that capacity; they bypass it.
The 2023 and 2025 Dutch controls demonstrate a better model. Both expansions were reached through bilateral coordination, not mandated by US statute. Japan implemented controls on 23 equipment types in July 2023 through a similar negotiated process. Neither required a 150-day ultimatum or the threat of FDPR enforcement against an ally.
Pro-innovation export control policy should be precise: target genuine chokepoints, work through multilateral frameworks, negotiate with partners rather than legislating their compliance, and avoid collateral damage to supply chains the US depends on as much as anyone. The MATCH Act does some of this right—the focus on DUV immersion systems and named Chinese facilities is defensible on security grounds. But the extraterritorial enforcement mechanism undermines the transatlantic trust the legislation needs to work.
If Congress is serious about building a durable coalition on semiconductor controls, it should remove the 150-day mandate and the FDPR extension threat. The Netherlands has already demonstrated it will act when properly engaged. Washington's task is to keep engaging it as a partner—not legislate it into compliance and call that an alliance.