How maker of 'most complex human machine' is navigating trade disputes?

Business Standard

a day ago

Seemingly every week, Christophe Fouquet, the chief executive of the Dutch technology company ASML, has found himself grappling with political firestorms.
Last month, President Trump announced 50 per cent tariffs on European goods sold to the United States, potentially raising some costs for ASML's lithography machines, which are critical for producing advanced microchips. Two days later, he paused the tariffs.
Around the same time, the foreign minister of the Netherlands was in Beijing, partly to discuss lifting the rules that bar Chinese companies from buying ASML's equipment. Then this week, the Dutch government collapsed, throwing any trade talks into question.
All of these events had the potential to disrupt ASML, which is the only maker of complex lithography machines that can cost as much as $400 million and be as big as a train car. The tools are so coveted by nations such as China and the United States for making cutting-edge chips that ASML has been turned into a geopolitical chess piece in trade battles, with some of its products restricted for export to certain countries.
The tussling has made it an uncertain time for Fouquet, 52, a Frenchman who took over as chief executive of the $300 billion company last year. 'A large part of it is still out of our hands,' he said in a recent interview from ASML's headquarters in the small town of Veldhoven, about 80 miles south of Amsterdam.
Fouquet, who was trained as an engineer, initially kept a low profile about the geopolitical challenges facing his company. Now, he has become more open about his concerns that government policies risk upending decades-old supply chains, slowing development of artificial intelligence and other technologies and motivating China to expand its homegrown semiconductor industry, which could ultimately undercut ASML's dominance and harm Western interests.
Already, he noted, China has begun developing some of its own tools for lithography, which is essential to projecting circuitry patterns on silicon wafers to create chips. While China has a way to go before matching ASML's technology, he said, 'the people you try to stop will work harder to be successful.'
'It doesn't matter how many obstacles you put in the way,' he added. Fouquet is part of a small group of chip executives who are pushing back against US trade policies that limit the sale of their products and services. Last month, Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, the largest producer of A.I. chips, said such policies meant to prevent China's access to key technologies were 'always questionable, and now it's clearly wrong.'
'Shielding Chinese chipmakers from US competition only strengthens them abroad and weakens America's position,' Huang said on a company earnings call.
Fouquet is trying to bolster ASML's position. Apart from speaking out about the consequences of trade policies, he has expanded the company's lobbying teams in Washington, Brussels and The Hague. He said the European Union and the Netherlands could do more to protect ASML and the semiconductor industry from being caught in the crossfire of US-Chinese fights.
'We always want people to step up more for us, there's no question,' he said. 'I think that for Europe, for the Netherlands, the fact that ASML is a big topic is a real opportunity.'
The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs declined to comment. Spokesmen for the European Commission and the US Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Since the 1980s, ASML has been developing lithography machines to help create chips, the foundational technology that acts as the brains of computers. The company's most advanced machines deploy extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, light to create small transistors to pack growing amounts of computing power onto slivers of silicon. That requires ultrasophisticated mirrors and powerful forms of light, created by blasting tiny droplets of tin with a laser.
The EUV tools include components from hundreds of international suppliers and require multiple 747 aircraft to deliver to customers from the Netherlands.
'It's the most complex machine humans have ever created, drawing on a supply chain that stretches across Europe, the United States and Asia, and harnesses fields like material science, physics, manufacturing, design and optics,' said Chris Miller, a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the author of 'Chip War,' a book about semiconductors.
ASML's business has boomed as chips have been integrated into more parts of everyday life, including smartphones, cars, toys and refrigerators. More recently, companies like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google have built huge data centers worldwide filled with A.I. chips made with ASML equipment. The company's revenue hit a record 28.3 billion euros last year, or $32.3 billion, and ASML estimates that sales could reach €44 billion to €60 billion by 2030.
Yet concerns about geopolitics, tariffs and export controls hang over the company. Some question if chip demand for the A.I. boom is sustainable and if ASML's newest machines are worth the $400 million cost. The company's stock is down about 25 percent over the past year.
Fouquet said the Trump administration's tariffs created additional challenges, fomenting uncertainty and undercutting US efforts to build domestic chip factories.
'If you want to manufacture chips in your home country, you have to make sure that the cost of those chips is reasonable,' he said. 'If you have tariffs, of course the cost goes up.'
Fouquet, who joined ASML in 2008, rose through the ranks to become vice president of the division making its EUV machines. About six years ago, those tools became the center of a debate over whether the West was supplying critical machines to China that would give the country a leg up, giving him a crash course in the geopolitics of technology.
In 2019, the Trump administration successfully lobbied the Dutch government to block shipments of ASML's EUV systems to China. During the Biden administration, the export bans were expanded to include older machines.
After trade restrictions, the company expects sales to China to fall to about 25 percent of its annual revenue from nearly half in the second quarter of last year, when ASML was delivering from a backlog of orders that could not be completed during the Covid pandemic. The semiconductor manufacturing hubs of Taiwan and South Korea are the company's largest markets.
Fouquet said he and his team are in regular contact with government officials in Washington, Brussels and The Hague. His message to them is that the semiconductor supply chain is globally integrated and that policies meant to affect one country can slow technological development and drive up costs for everyone.
Export bans can be counterproductive, he said, warning against using national security to justify protectionist policies. Rather than a focus solely on holding back an economic rival like China, attention needs to be on innovating, he said.
Gregory C. Allen, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former US defense official, said export bans were needed to slow China from creating an independent domestic semiconductor sector. Beijing is using tax breaks, free land, cash infusions and other subsidies to boost its companies, he said.
Huawei, the Chinese technology company, has hired ASML workers to develop lithography machines, but remains behind, Allen said. Chinese companies stockpiled older models of ASML's lithography machines before export bans took effect, he added, allowing them to move forward with less advanced chip manufacturing.
'This is one technology where China is furthest behind, and it is technology that China will almost certainly be the last to replicate,' he said.
On a recent Monday in Veldhoven, signs of ASML's growth were on display. Three construction cranes were in place to expand the company's headquarters. Inside, engineers dressed in sterilized white bunny suits tested the latest lithography machines.
Seated in a top-floor conference room overlooking it all, Fouquet was optimistic that the industry was at 'just the start' of an A.I. boom that would drive demand for ASML's tools. Yet he acknowledged that geopolitical tensions were likely to continue to entangle his company. 'We cannot be naïve,' he said. 'This industry has become strategic for everyone.'