In an interview with Dutch radio station BNR on Saturday, the recently resigned CEO of semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASML stated that the ongoing U.S.-China disagreements over computer chips are ideological and not grounded in reality, according to Reuters.
After leading ASML for ten years and seeing it develop into the biggest technological company in Europe, Wennink left in April.
Citing security concerns, the U.S. has been placing more and more limits on the tools that the company can ship to China, which is its second-largest market after Taiwan, since 2018. The United States has recently attempted to prevent the company from maintaining equipment that has already been supplied to customers in China.
"These kinds of discussions are not being conducted on the basis of facts or content or numbers or data but on the basis of ideology," Wennink stated.
"You can think anything you want about that, but in our industry, it's important to handle stakeholder interests in a balanced manner. I have issues with that if ideology goes right through it."
The company has been operating in China for thirty years, he added, "So you also have obligations".
Wennink added that to find a compromise, he had complained to senior Chinese lawmakers when he believed the company's intellectual property was not being honoured and had lobbied wherever feasible to keep export restrictions from getting too severe.
"I think in Washington, maybe they sometimes thought, that Mr. Wennink, maybe he's a friend of China," he said.
"No. I'm a friend to my customers, to my suppliers, to my employees, to my shareholders."
He predicted that the chip war might take decades to resolve given the geopolitical interests involved.
"This is going to go on for a while," he said.
