Chip tools under export pressure as sales surge

U.S. lawmakers have proposed cutting China off from a class of ASML chipmaking machines that Chinese fabs still use to make advanced circuitry. (usnews.com) The draft MATCH Act was announced on April 2 and would extend U.S.-style restrictions to foreign suppliers including ASML and Tokyo Electron, not just American toolmakers. Reuters reported the bill would also bar sales or servicing for leading Chinese groups including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, Hua Hong, Huawei, ChangXin Memory Technologies and Yangtze Memory Technologies. (usnews.com) (bloomberg.com) The specific target is immersion deep ultraviolet lithography, the light-based patterning step that draws chip features onto silicon wafers. Reuters said lawmakers focused on that segment because China still relies on imports there, and ASML dominates it, with Nikon as a smaller rival. (usnews.com) (asml.com) ASML describes its immersion deep ultraviolet systems as the workhorses for high-volume production of advanced logic and memory chips. Its TWINSCAN NXT:1980Di, one of the tools at issue in recent reporting, is designed for volume production at advanced nodes and lists uptime above 97 percent. (asml.com 1) (asml.com 2) The pressure is landing while chip-equipment spending is still climbing. SEMI said worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales rose 15 percent to a record $135.1 billion in 2025, up from $117.1 billion in 2024. (semi.org) That growth was broad, but the fastest gains were tied to artificial intelligence hardware. SEMI said test equipment billings jumped 55 percent and assembly and packaging sales rose 21 percent as high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging moved deeper into production. (semi.org) China remained one of the biggest buyers even under existing controls. SEMI said China’s equipment spending was $49.3 billion in 2025, down 0.5 percent from 2024, while China, Taiwan and South Korea together accounted for 79 percent of the global market. (semi.org) ASML was already operating under tighter rules before Congress stepped in. The company said in December 2024 that updated U.S. restrictions added more Chinese fab locations and could affect exports of immersion deep ultraviolet systems if Dutch authorities made a similar security assessment. (asml.com) China was ASML’s largest market in 2025 at 33 percent of sales, Reuters reported, though ASML said in January it expected that share to fall to about 20 percent in 2026. ASML declined to comment on the draft U.S. bill, and the Dutch foreign ministry said export policy is for the Netherlands to oversee. (usnews.com) The result is a split-screen semiconductor market: governments are trying to narrow China’s access to the machines that print chips, while manufacturers elsewhere are spending at record levels to add capacity for artificial intelligence, memory and packaging. (semi.org) (usnews.com)