Rob Hoeijmakers

I suspect David is right here 👇 And if so it'd be the most ironic possible resolution for the Nexperia debacle. What the White House factsheet (whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2…) says about Nexperia is: "China will take appropriate measures to ensure the resumption of trade from Nexperia’s facilities in China, allowing production of critical legacy chips to flow to the rest of the world." Not a word about the Netherlands or Europe, it says trade will resume FROM CHINA. So it's entirely possible, even likely, that the deal is that Nexperia China, which effectively split from Nexperia Netherlands after the Dutch seized the company, will become the main contracting party. Meaning the deal would effectively hand China full operational control of Nexperia's operations while leaving Europe with a hollowed-out shell company. The theory makes sense: Nexperia China already handled 70% of the actual production for Nexperia overall. The main thing they were getting from Europe were the silicon wafers, which Europe has now stopped sending (reuters.com/world/europe/nex…). But those are legacy chips products that Chinese foundries like SMIC and Hua Hong can also produce at scale so the European fabs weren't providing anything irreplaceable. If this all gets verified, there are so many layers of irony here. This whole debacle occurred because of the new "BIS 50% rule" introduced by the U.S. in late September that expanded US sanctions to any company that was at least 50% owned by entities on Washington's trade blacklist. Wingtech Technology, the Chinese owner of Nexperia, was added on the blacklist since last December and so Nexperia was going to get sanctioned by the U.S. too. Unless, that is, as the U.S. told the Dutch (ft.com/content/db019842-01a9…), they were to seize the company away from its Chinese owners, which is what prompted the Dutch to do exactly that simultaneously to the U.S. introducing the new "BIS 50% rule." Since then, as part of the deal between Xi and Trump, the U.S. has agreed to suspend this "BIS 50% rule," thereby removing the whole rational the Dutch had to seize the company. However, probably out of misplaced pride, or rather shame of looking like complete U.S. vassals, the Dutch are ridiculously claiming their seizing the company was unrelated with the "BIS 50% rule" but rather had to do with "mismanagement" by the Chinese CEO of the business who, according to them, was seeking to move Nexperia's manufacturing operations to China and transfer technological knowledge to its Chinese parent company. Which is laughable: since when does a government seize an entire company because it wants to produce in China, all the more a company that was already producing 70% of its output in China and had Chinese ownership for years? Apparently the Dutch suddenly discovered in September 2025 - coincidentally within 24 hours after the U.S. introduced its "BIS 50% rule" - that a manufacturing footprint established years earlier now posed an urgent national security threat. If this resolution gets confirmed it's ironies upon ironies: - Washington created the BIS 50% rule to decouple Chinese firms from Western supply chains. In practice, it may have just decoupled from the Dutch middleman while leaving China with more control - The Dutch justified their action by claiming it was done to prevent Nexperia moving operations to China and the result of their action seems to have caused this exact outcome - Trump suspended the BIS 50% rule after having pressured the Dutch to act on it, leaving them holding the bag for a decision made to satisfy American strategic interests that America itself has now walked back - Europe positioned itself as defending its technological sovereignty and it looks like they'll end up losing both the company and its credibility as a sovereign actor, all the more since the resolution was negotiated between Trump and Xi in South Korea with Europe completely absent from the table