What happened to free trade?

Yes US! Embargo every other nation on the planet! Do it! I'm sure it'll go great for you!

Shares in Tokyo Electron fell 7.5%, leading a drop in Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average. Fellow chip gear providers including Lasertec Corp. and Screen Holdings Co. also ranked among the market’s biggest decliners. ASML’s stock was similarly down 9.9% in Amsterdam, even as the company reported better-than-expected second-quarter bookings. Shares of Applied Materials Inc., Lam Research Corp. and KLA Corp. — the three biggest American makers of chip equipment — also tumbled on Wednesday. Applied Materials, the largest of the three, fell as much as 7.8% in its worst intraday decline since November.

I don't think the drop in share prices matter that much. The dips from previous announcements of sanctions went away quickly, because the chip industry overall is in a very strong position globally.

The administration is in a tenuous position. US companies feel that restrictions on exports to China have unfairly punished them and are pushing for changes. Allies, meanwhile, see little reason to alter their policies when the US presidential election is just a few months away.

This is really the crux of the issue, and not so much geopolitics. Some of the US companies that pushed for the sanctions (like Micron tech) have themselves suffered from Chinese retaliation (Micron tech "mysteriously" failed its cybersecurity review in China, and China has clamped down on germanium exports).

The American chip-equipment makers — Applied Materials, Lam and KLA — have been pressing their case in a series of recent meetings with US officials, according to people familiar with the situation. They have argued that current trade policies are backfiring, damaging American semiconductor companies while failing to halt Chinese progress as much as the US government hoped. But the companies don’t want the administration to use FDPR. They fear it will provoke Japan and the Netherlands to become defiant and stop cooperating.

Amazing to see western corporate interests just openly dictating government policy. The rest of the article just plainly lays out which company is telling its government to do what. We've dropped even the pretenses.

How to make other countries abandon the dollar 101

US copium trying to sanction China by proxy. China already has advanced semiconductor tech.

It would be really funny if the yanks forced the Dutch into BRICS membership.

(I know this won't happen, as the Dutch are going to lay down flat and prostrate themselves once their overlord tells them to do so but it would be really funny)

Japan and Netherlands joining BRICS in 2025 or 26?

lol

Cmon Biden, force them to fully pivot to China!

"Most severe trade restrictions available" just sounds like bullshit to scare their leaders. Also feels like "double secret probation" from Revenge of the Nerds.

And yet the Dutch see the US as allies

The joys of being a vassal of the empire. Netherlands and Japan now seeing their high tech industry be destroyed in order to serve US interests. As Kissinger so aptly put it, it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.

• friendly countries trade semiconductor tech to China of their own volition
• this is bad and they need to be punished

The best part is that they can't even frame this as China overstepping or coercing them into doing it.

Sanction raj

Maybe they'll grow some balls and tell the US to GTFO (whishful thinking).

If China develops a competitor for ASML, its literally JOEVER for the west lol. And sanctioning this particular field would incentivize china to do exactly that 😂