Dutch company ASML, one of Europe’s leading chip manufacturers, warned on Wednesday of the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war amid disappointing financial results.
“This dynamic is creating a new uncertainty,” said ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet in a video on the occasion of the company’s first-quarter earnings, where the company acknowledged there could be an impact on demand for its chip printing machines.
ASML is key to Europe’s pitch to become technologically sovereign. It’s one of the few companies globally able to manufacture machines needed to print microchips, which are used in everything from smartphones to electric cars — a rare area where Europe has an edge in chipmaking over other regions.
On Monday, the European Commission’s tech chief Henna Virkkunen visited ASML’s headquarters in the Netherlands. The EU executive is gearing up for a second major chipmaking support plan, which will focus on chips powerful enough to train artificial intelligence models. “Advanced microchips are the essential building blocks of AI systems,” Virkkunen said Monday.
AI is currently “the driver of the market,” ASML’s Fouquet said Wednesday.
Orders for ASML’s machines came in below analysts’ expectations. ASML’s share price was down roughly 5 percent in response to the disappointing results.
ASML executives broke down several ways in which tariffs could impact the company: tariffs on entire machines shipped to the U.S., tariffs on parts and tools shipped to the U.S. for manufacturing, or retaliatory tariffs that other countries impose on the U.S.
Semiconductors have so far been exempted from targeted U.S. tariffs, amid a wider 90-day pause.
Machines to produce chips were not granted an exemption, which could lead to hefty additional costs for manufacturers if tariffs kick in given the price tag for machines runs to hundreds of millions.
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