This is absolutely wild. The Dutch government has officially taken control of Nexperia, a major Chinese-owned semiconductor firm, in a move that stunned both industry and investors.
They didn’t just “intervene” — they suspended the Chinese CEO, handed voting power to a non-Chinese director, and placed the company’s shares under a third-party trustee.
All of it justified under a wartime emergency law — one designed for things like fuel rationing, not high-tech corporate takeovers.
And it’s happening right as the U.S. rolls out Trump’s new “50% rule”, which places any subsidiary with Chinese ownership on the Entity List.
The timing is no coincidence — Europe seems to be following Washington’s playbook, step for step.
This move is risky for several reasons:
- 💸 Investor confidence: If European governments can seize assets overnight, who will risk building there?
- 🇨🇳 Retaliation risk: China won’t take this lightly — it could hit back against European automakers or materials firms.
- ⚙️ Industrial damage: Nexperia employs 14,000 people and is one of Europe’s few profitable chipmakers. This power grab destabilizes its future.
Instead of asserting strategic autonomy, Europe has once again shown it’s reactive, not independent.
The smarter path would’ve been to strengthen internal safeguards, not surrender industrial sovereignty to geopolitical pressure.
The message this sends is crystal clear:
If Washington doesn’t like your nationality, your business in Europe is fair game.
This isn’t just a story about chips — it’s a warning about how economic sovereignty is quietly vanishing under the banner of “security.”
