Dutch minister admits he was blindsided by China in Nexperia chip crisis

Export controls may have been the economic weapon of choice in 2025, but the Dutch minister at the centre of the Nexperia crisis has admitted he was blindsided by Beijing when it blocked the company’s chips from leaving China.

“An assessment was made of possible counterreactions; this wasn’t the most likely reaction from China,” said Vincent Karremans, the Dutch economy minister, during a debate on the Nexperia saga in the House of Representatives on Thursday evening.

On October 4, five days after Karremans triggered the Goods Availability Act to prevent Nexperia’s Chinese owners from transferring production capacity from Europe to China, Beijing restricted the shipment of finished chips from the company’s back-end plants in Dongguan.

It is there that 70 per cent of its estimated 10 billion legacy chips are tested and packaged each year – an obvious chokepoint at a time when they have been mercilessly exploited by major superpowers.

Behind the Nexperia crisis and China-Netherlands tech tensions | China Future Tech webinar

During a long hearing, Karremans – whose behaviour was described variously as “reckless”, “sloppy” and “amateurish” – was quizzed on why he did not predict Beijing’s response, which caused some global auto giants to idle production lines due to a shortage of chips.

South China Morning Post