The Nexperia Crisis Shows Why Export Controls Need Allied Coordination
Unilateral controls leave allies to fend for themselves. Collective resilience is in all of their best interests when facing China.
Nexperia logo. (https://www.heute.at/i/chip-streit-entschaerft-auto-industrie-atmet-auf-120145041/doc-1jadu5ena4; CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
This article was originally published in Lawfare on January 17, 2026. Read it HERE.
Nexperia, a Dutch semiconductor manufacturer, is not the kind of chip company that winds up in the headlines. With the world swept up in the mania of Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, and the future of high-end artificial intelligence (AI) chips, legacy semiconductors rarely garner much attention. Yet in October 2025, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced restrictions on Nexperia chips—likely in response to changes in U.S. export control policy—sparking chaos in Europe’s automotive industry. Both Volvo and Volkswagen warned of imminent factory closures. Although China has since resumed some chip shipments, European carmakers did not find a workaround to the resulting chip shortage until January 2026.
The Nexperia standoff was yet another example of how Beijing has exerted technological influence over its European trading partners by controlling just one chokepoint in the production of legacy technologies. But the United States has a major stake in this vulnerability too: If China’s share of global foundational chip markets continues to grow, it will add a new weapon to its economic arsenal, one that could cripple dozens of industries worldwide and severely undermine the efficacy of U.S. export controls in the event of another trade war or military confrontation. With the immediate effects of the crisis subsiding, the Dutch and the U.S. have an opportunity to reevaluate their strategies for countering China’s economic leverage.
The lesson should be clear: Unilateral export controls are not only insufficient in the long run but can be actively counterproductive, catching allies in the crossfire of U.S.-China competition. Even from a purely transactional standpoint, the U.S. and its allies have much to gain from joint responses to Chinese economic coercion. Building collective economic resilience through coordinated export controls, co-investment in decoupling efforts, and extensive information sharing is the only viable path forward. Allied coordination is discussed typically in the context of frontier AI, but legacy chips demand equal attention. Getting this right matters not just for Europe’s auto sector, but for the broader cohesion of the Western technology alliance.
This article was originally published in Lawfare on January 17, 2026. Read the full article HERE.
Noah Tan is the James C. Gaither Junior Fellow for the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His work centers on AI supply chains and international technology competition. Previously, he was a research affiliate at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Hoover Institution, where he worked on international security and economic statecraft. He holds a B.A. In International Relations with Honors and Distinction from Stanford University and is a 2027 Schwarzman Scholar.