The administration of US President Joe Biden has reached an agreement with the Netherlands and Japan to limit the export of some advanced technologies for the production of chips in China. The negotiations on this issue took place and ended on Friday in Washington, the newspaper reports Bloomberg.
The deal is aimed at undermining Beijing's ambitions to build its own domestic chip manufacturing capacity and extending export controls adopted by the US in October to companies from the two allies.
The actual implementation of the restrictions could take months.
"Negotiations have been going on for a long time, and if something comes out of it, will it be very publicized," said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
A spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A representative of the Ministry of Trade of the Netherlands declined to comment at all.
The Netherlands will not allow ASML to sell immersion lithography equipment to China, the most advanced type of equipment in the deep ultraviolet lithography line. This equipment is crucial for the production of advanced microcircuits. Japan will impose similar restrictions on Nikon.
The deal is a victory for Biden, who is seeking to curb Beijing's military advances by cutting off the country from the world's smallest semiconductors. "It will take time, but eventually they will get there," the US president said on January 25.
