[mainecoder]

Well the Chinese are powerful and without the help of the US the Netherlands can't do much. Additionally, the process of moving discrete semiconductor production to China is already underway. Production in Hamburg will stop sometime in late 2029 and the R&D center in Nijmegen, Delft will close done late 2028. The US should have helped the Netherlands but now it is over the Chinese won this battle and fairly easily they did not need to use much of the leverage that they had. The commentary by EU officials shows that they used a top down approach using the EU to pressure the Dutch.

[aldrich]

Are you sure this is right, and if so would you mind sharing a source for this?

According to the Nexperia 2024 annual report [1], they had just committed to _invest_ in the Hamburg site for their WBG/SiC/GaN production lines. Closure of the fab in Nijmegen was actually reported by NXP[2] not Nexperia - different companies.

[1] https://www.nexperia.com/dam/jcr:fc307e7e-e159-482c-b21b-0f9... [2] https://bits-chips.com/article/closure-of-nxps-nijmegen-fab-...

[goobatrooba]

They didn't use the EU, they put pressure on companies in other countries, notably Germany, which then did the rest.

[mainecoder]

Additionally I forgot to mention the withholding of shipments from China of the finished product that served as a public(visible) leverage.

[lysace]

Perhaps something could have been done via the EU. (No, I know, France/Italy/Spain/Germany are way too obsessed with their exports to PRC.)

Been there/done that - Sweden was unjustly bullied by China and got next to no support from EU. That was a mask off moment for some of us. It seems that for member states like Sweden and the Netherlands, we're supposed to just pay a lot of money in order to get toll-free access to the internal market.

Edit: I would welcome a split into EU North and EU South. Sort of like Aldi North and Aldi South.

EU North: UK (welcome back!), Norway (hello!), Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Estonia.

EU South: The other countries.

[mainecoder]

What if I told you that China has more influence over the EU than it has over the Kamer der Staten-Generaal( the Dutch parliament), thus they are using the EU to pressure the dutch. The irony is that European Sovereignty is respected when all the countries of Europe are able to make their own sovereignty respected i.e. it is each of the individual states making their own sovereignty respected that actually elevates the sovereignty of Europe, the EU by pressuring, disregarding and relegating the sovereignty of the member states devalues the collective sovereignty of Europe. Additionally adversaries need only focus on having leverage over EU officials and the EU officials will do their bidding for them.

[TitaRusell]

For the Netherlands the whole world is just a board game for local politics.

Seeing international media overthink this as some kind of deep strategy is mildly amusing.

[MrMorden]

The CPC leadership have plenty of personal assets stashed in the EU/UK. It would be easy enough to take them to the cleaners by prosecuting them for violating Chinese AML laws.

[wkat4242]

You definitely don't want Holland or UK in your new union. With the rise of fascism there, Farage in the UK (and Brexit was purely xenofobia driven) and the PVV, FvD, JA21 in Holland owning nearly a third of seats.

The EU is getting worse though yes with their damaging of the gdpr, trying to force chatcontrol etc.