By Toby Sterling
(Reuters) -The chief executive of Dutch computer chip equipment supplier ASML said on Wednesday a U.S.-led campaign to restrict the company’s exports to customers in China in the name of national security has become more “economically motivated” over time.
Christophe Fouquet, speaking at a Citi conference in New York, said he expects push-back against U.S.-led restrictions to grow. At the same time, he argued Chinese advances in chip making are slowing due to restrictions that are already in place.
“I think to make the case that this is about national security is getting harder and harder,” Fouquet said.
“Most probably there will be more pressure for restrictions, but I also think there will be more push-back and I think we have to hope we reach a certain equilibrium because as a business what we all want is a bit of clarity, a bit of stability.”
The Netherlands’ prime minister said on Friday he would carefully weigh the economic interests of ASML, the country’s largest company and Europe’s largest technology firm, following successive rounds of U.S. and Dutch restrictions in 2022 and 2023.
The U.S. government has been pushing since April for ASML to stop servicing some of the equipment it sold to Chinese customers before 2024 that would now fall under restrictions.
Separately, Fouquet repeated ASML’s financial forecasts for 2024 and 2025, saying that while a recovery in computer chip markets has been uneven, demand for AI chips has been a bright spot.
ASML’s biggest customer is TSMC, the Taiwan-based firm that manufactures chips for Nvidia and Apple.
(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Jamie Freed)
