By Adam Levine
A bipartisan group of U.S. representatives introduced a bill on Friday that would further tighten export controls for semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales to China. The whole equipment industry has something to lose were this bill to become law, but the hardest hit company would be ASML of the Netherlands.
The Multilateral Alignment of Technology Controls on Hardware (MATCH) Act seeks to close gaps in export controls and enforcement, which are a patchwork of executive branch regulations and negotiations that were implemented over years.
"The U.S. government has taken a number of steps to make sure that American companies are not providing critical technologies to China and trying to ensure that we maintain a lead in the AI supercomputing race, and we need to plug some gaps in some partner countries," Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a Republican from eastern Washington who introduced the bill, told Barron's.
The bill's 10 co-sponsors in the House are evenly split between the two parties. In the Senate, a similar bipartisan measure is expected to be introduced soon by Sens. Pete Ricketts (R.-Neb.) and Andy Kim, (D.-N.J.).
"Republicans and Democrats both look at China's activities that are destabilizing to global peace and security, and confrontational to American interests, and they have concerns," Baumgartner says.
Were the bill to become law in its current form, the most impacted of the big semiconductor manufacturing equipment makers would be the industry giant, ASML.
It is the leader in lithography machines, which are central to chipmaking, and are specifically called out in the bill. ASML has long been banned from selling its highest-end-machines to China, and the newest product ASML can currently sell was launched in 2015. This bill would ban sales of that machine and others in the ASML lineup.
The bill would also prevent some high-margin services that the equipment-makers provide their Chinese customers.
ASML did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Despite not being able to sell its most expensive equipment that can cost up to 350 million euro ($403 million) per machine, ASML's sales to China have skyrocketed since China ramped up its semiconductor investment in the last few years. Only 14% of ASML system sales were to China in 2022. Even as export controls tightened, in 2024 Chinese sales were 41% of the total and then a third of sales in 2025.
During its fourth-quarter earnings call in January, the company said it expects Chinese sales to comprise only 20% of 2026 sales, though it made a similar prediction about 2025 that did not pan out.
The most crucial chips for artificial-intelligence computing, like Nvidia's GPU chips and high-bandwidth memory from Micron, are made on production lines employing ASML's high-end machines. Chinese manufacturers have been cut off from making these sorts of chips but have worked hard to make the older equipment more effective. It has also been producing lower-end chips in greater numbers, with much of them sold to domestic electronics manufacturers.
While not as important as the cutting edge chips from U.S., Korean and Taiwanese companies, the chips that are the target of the bill are used in AI data centers and military hardware. The proposed legislation aims to fight off any nascent Chinese advantage in those market segments.
Write to Adam Levine at adam.levine@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 03, 2026 15:44 ET (19:44 GMT)
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