So, the Dutch seized a Chinese owned semiconductor company:
The Dutch government seizes control over Nexperia, one of Europe’s biggest chipmaker, owned by China.
Nexperia’s Chinese operations pose a “threat to the continuity and safeguarding on Dutch and European soil of crucial technological knowledge and capabilities.” – 🇳🇱 Gov. pic.twitter.com/0PXmFIVvKp
— NXT EU (@NXT4EU) October 13, 2025
Mistake. Big mistake. And the Dutch will pay for it.
This is a clear escalation in the US/China trade war (the EU are on a leash, they have no independent trade policy.)
Here’s what I want everyone to understand. The Chinese make everything that matters. Not the end products, but the parts. They make the parts required for almost every industry to operate. For decades I inveigled against international trade logistics and the idea that “it doesn’t matter where something is made.”
China spent the last 9 years, since Trump kicked off the trade war era in 2016 with his absolutely moronic Huawei and chip bans, making sure that their supply chains are domestic or in completely trusted allies. (Vietnam is not going to start a trade war with China.) They make everything they need for most of their industries, with only a few exceptions, like commercial jet engines. (They’re working on that, but two or three years out.)
It used to be, for example, that they bought almost all their helium from America. They fixed that, and now make it domestically. This has been systematic. The Chinese looked at their weaknesses in a trade war and fixed almost all of them.
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America did little of significance, though Biden did start a small amount of rare earth and magnet industry. US industries almost all need parts or materials they can only get from China.
If China decides to seriously go to trade war, Western economies will collapse. They will have to shutter most factories, you won’t be able to get parts for household appliances, cars, planes, air conditioners, drying machines. Practically anything. And the West has given away so much basic industry that we’d be rebuilding almost from zero, in many cases. Even the expertise is gone in many industries, or those who have it are in their sixties or older.
If we fight a trade war with China we will be horrifically hurt.
China doesn’t want a trade war, because it will hurt them too. They still sell a lot to the West. But they will survive it far better than we will.
Stop being morons, and make trade-peace.
Feral Finster
In a world of fiat currencies, usually the country with the trade deficit is in a better position to win a trade war.
bruce wilder
The global logistics system we have has been designed and built by China to benefit China and to give China great leverage. It replaced systems designed by the U.S. and its multinationals and before that, the imperial colonial powers. China was deliberate and open in using western financial systems to dismantle and deindustrialize thru the Western system of multinational business corporations. They made considerable sacrifices domestically to reward and corrupt western financial institutions.
Any reversal of China’s “accomplishments” in the West is going to look pretty stupid at first. It doesn’t mean that a reversal isn’t desirable in principle. It just means that Western governance is so corrupted that any policy change will reveal how deep is the rot set in motion by China using financialization as its channel of penetration.
I wouldn’t want to press the analogy more than a few millimeters, but I cannot help but see the parallels with the stupidest of all international conflicts, the First World War, which started off ostensibly as an armed contest among vast Empires and quickly devolved into numerous national social as well as political revolutions and struggles. Trade war has to come and has to be stupid, because it has to become revolution.
KT Chong
What exactly is the Netherlands’ long-term game here, seizing a Chinese-owned company? Do they have some huge secret stash of rare earth minerals that nobody else knows about?
The Netherlands gets almost all of its rare earths from China, either directly or indirectly via Germany and Japan. If and when China cuts off rare earths to the Netherlands, Nexperia will become practically useless for the Dutch.
The same goes for ASML, NXP, Philips, DSM, AkzoNobel, Besi — the list goes on. That’s a lot of tech companies in the Netherlands, and all of them heavily rely on Chinese rare earths and supply chains. America and Australia can’t supply nearly enough rare earths to replace China for the Dutch.
Also, there are far more Dutch companies and investments in China than there are Chinese assets in the Netherlands. China could play and easily win this company-seizing game with the Dutch.
So what is the Dutch government’s game plan here? Are they just going to hope and pray that China won’t retaliate? Or do they think hiding behind the EU will protect them? Because hiding behind the EU certainly didn’t save Lithuania from China’s wrath.
Mark Level
I just think we have reached an era of utter lawlessness and contempt vis-a-vis the “Rules Based Order” and it is now We Make Up the Rules (as We Go) & We Issue the Orders.
And I think there is a stunning amount of Neocolonial Racism and entitlement behind pygmies like the Dutch imagining they can steal from a country with the political, economic and military power of China and face no consequences. Trump bit off more than he could chew when he tried to bluff the Chinese with 100% tariffs and they bit back with “No Rare Earths,” something far more devastating to the US economy even in the short term. Alex Christoforou covered this earlier today, and quoted Trump saying “My friend President Xi just had a bad moment, but everything will be great going forward.” (Paraphrased.) Dream on Idiot.
Similar I’ll shoot myself in the crotch to hurt you moments: I’m reminded when Cleavon Little’s Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles is being chased by a lynch mob and tricks them by aiming his own gun at his face and neck, “Back off or I’ll shoot the N—-r.” In that case it worked . . . In “reality” recently– Macron grabbed an Asian-flagged oil tanker carrying Russian oil in the Baltic Sea, arrested 2 (not even Russian) crew members claiming there was “uncertainty” about how the ship was flagged. I guess the original plan was just to steal the oil (something the US has done intermittently to Iranian oil tankers over at least the past 3 administrations, open piracy) but he backed down after a day and the tanker went on its way. Mercouris discussed this too, and the obvious. France made an enemy (again) not just of Russia but whichever Asian State the flag covered.
The incompetent criminal Von Der Lyin’ is doing something similar with a transfer of $1.5 Billion of EU funds to Ukraine so Zelensky can “fight to the Last Ukrainian”. Where’d the Capital for this come from. From the “interest” (perhaps from the principal) of a couple billion of “Russian Foreign Assets.” The opioid fantasy is that Ukraine will WIN and march on Moscow by about 2028 and then Russia will be forced to pay “reparations.” The odds of that are 600,000 to one, so when it doesn’t happen who’s on the hook for the Sunk Cost Fallacy Bungle? Apparently the EU imagines they have a Calvinball Excuse that means that they won’t be liable!! They’ve been warned by the Bloomberg Org and various big bankers not to do this. They can’t stop themselves however. Hatred of Russia makes them flush billions down the toilet.
Naked Capitalism had a thread on these childish games recently and it was pointed out by many that when the Russians are done there will be a reckoning, just as KT Chong notes viz China v. the Dutch. They hold the ability to pay themselves back with hundreds of Western business assets left behind once the SMO started and the Starbucks and McD’s turned into Russian property, effectively.
Oh, and here’s another idiot Trump shoot myself in the face (okay, shoot the sucker taxpayers in the face actually). When the SMO started, US copied the EU and shut the Russians out of overflying their territory. Well and dandy. However, since Russia is the world’s largest country geographically (never mind Trump counting up the “Gulf of America” and the Northern Arctic around Greenland and north of Canada & saying the US has “the most territory of any nation in the world”) the Western airlines get hit hard with much longer flights and greater expenses for travelers. So Trump also reportedly sanctioned/ tarriffed China because they’re not hostile to Russia and don’t face these restrictions!!
Well, until he says TA and COs, chickens out.
I remember the propaganda from way back when (which was possibly true, how would I know) that the Chinese would charge families for the bullet with which they executed political prisoners. The West generally is playing this kind of stupid game right now, and as Ian concludes, the losers will NOT be the Asian powers. Do these morons know how much more of international trade is covered by the BRICS countries (looks like India will be back in also) than the Western Anglo “5 Eyes” looters. There are plenty of charts out there, I think some have been shared on this site.
Going to disagree with Finster, a “fiat currency” is only as good as the products it can buy, and as noted, US farming, Industry (what little there is) etc. will be crushed and if there are few or no crops coming in, all the fiat currency in the world won’t save starving masses of consumers.
I didn’t comment on the “Is Trump about to do a fascist coup” thread because I just think the US is too dug in in foreign quagmires that it can’t let go of to effectively run a Race War/ Coup/ new system of racial classification in this country too soon. The Trump people are a bunch of insane zealots, even many of their chumps (Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Marjorie Taylor Green) have denounced the brutality of ICE recently. (Von was cited by ICE as a supporter of their tactics, his father was from Nicaragua, he wasn’t cool with this and called them out), made them retract claims of his “support.” Rogan (lame and dumb as he is) had enough vestigial conscience to say “Do they really need to pull guns on people who have been here for over 20 years, and have no criminal record, in front of their children”? Beyond that, these people are just not competent.
Due Dissidence covered this well, the “Manosphere” has turned on the videoed beatings (6 agents in 6 cars converging on a 15 year old girl and throwing her to the ground while she screams) . . . only the sickest of the sick can stomach this. Okay, Alligator Alcatraz is still open and is supposed to get $608 million from FEMA but these kind of money sinks do hurt the government’s viability even in the short term, moreso long term.
Will this country limp along until the next Presidential election? I have no way of knowing. If the election is between the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals then it matters not, Biden’s promise to the donors that “Fundamentally nothing will change” will hold. But as an earlier thread noted, Trump (unless he transfers Mar-a-Lardo to a fully rebuilt Gaza strip) or his Dimmie successor, Newsom or Buttigieg, will be only “the King of Shit Mountain.”
Feral Finster
@KT Chong:
“So what is the Dutch government’s game plan here? Are they just going to hope and pray that China won’t retaliate? Or do they think hiding behind the EU will protect them? Because hiding behind the EU certainly didn’t save Lithuania from China’s wrath.”
The dutch government has no priority other than the War On Russia, specifically getting the United States to fight europe’s war on their behalf again.
The dutch get a pat on the head and brownie points, an I.O.U. to be cashed in soon, when it comes time for the Americans to get stuck in.
Will this do anyone in the netherlands or Europe any good? No.
Does anyone of influence and authority in or out of holland care? No.