Nexperia’s position in the semiconductor space has rarely drawn mainstream attention. The Dutch-headquartered firm specializes in the kind of components that disappear into circuit boards by the billions. Yet, its devices sit inside automotive powertrains, industrial controllers, consumer chargers, and virtually every category of electronics.
When the Netherlands moved in October to suspend the authority of Nexperia’s Chinese ownership under its emergency economic-security rules, it set off a sequence of actions in Washington and Beijing, pushed European carmakers into a fresh scramble for parts, and raised wider questions about how long a firm with global roots can operate across competing jurisdictions without becoming a diplomatic flashpoint.
Nexperia was once part of Philips and later NXP, before being acquired privately by China’s Wingtech Technology in 2018. That transaction placed a European industrial supplier within a Chinese electronics conglomerate with links to government-backed investment programmes. Wingtech grew aggressively after the acquisition, and by 2025, Nexperia was producing roughly 110 billion parts per year across its fabs in Hamburg and Manchester and its assembly centres in Asia.
These were not cutting-edge processors, but high-volume power semiconductors, regulators, and discrete logic. They underpin far more sophisticated systems built by others. In sectors such as automotive, a vehicle can contain hundreds of these devices, and the failure of even one category of them cascades into production delays.
That backdrop set the scene for a major reaction when the U.S. added Wingtech to the Entity List in late 2024. The controls did not immediately apply to Nexperia, but Washington made clear that any effort to route restricted technology through its European subsidiary would be treated as a violation. The following summer, the U.S. introduced its “affiliates” rule, extending those restrictions to any majority-owned unit of a listed entity. That swept Nexperia into the same category.
A national intervention with international consequences
(Image credit: Intel)
On 30 September 2025, the Dutch government invoked the Emergency Goods Availability Act to prevent what it called the “possible relocation” of critical assets and to stabilise Nexperia’s operations inside the EU. The statute had been dormant for decades and had never been used for a semiconductor firm. It allowed The Hague to suspend the authority of Nexperia’s then-CEO, Zhang Xuezheng, who also founded Wingtech, and to transfer voting rights on behalf of the parent company to a court-appointed administrator while an investigation into management practices was opened.
Within days, the provisional measures were upheld by the Dutch courts, and the newly installed leadership halted shipments from Nexperia Europe to its Chinese arm, citing uncertainty over export compliance. Chinese state media responded by arguing that Europe was politicizing a commercial dispute. Beijing then introduced export restrictions on certain finished semiconductors produced by Nexperia’s Chinese subsidiaries and, crucially, on contract manufacturers that handled assembly for European-bound parts. The restrictions came with carve-outs only after several weeks of negotiation.
Several major carmakers warned of renewed shortages of basic power components. In 2021 and 2022, the automotive industry had already become a case study in how a lack of cents-worth parts could stall production of systems costing tens of thousands of dollars. This time, the shortages were rooted not in pandemic shutdowns but in the regulatory limbo created by overlapping national controls. Suppliers scrambling for substitute components reported lead times stretching into the following year. European regulators noted that Nexperia’s parts are embedded across hundreds of platforms, and a sudden loss of even a small share of output would propagate across multiple production lines.
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