Is Europe really breaking free from China, or just following the US?

In 1987, The New York Times published an open letter addressed to the American people. Its author, a New York real estate developer named Donald Trump, accused Japan of taking advantage of the United States and warned that America was being “laughed at” by its trading partners. Nearly 40 years later, now in his second presidential term, Trump has turned the same grievance towards China, accusing it of exploiting US generosity and undermining US power.

That idea now drives Washington’s global strategy and increasingly shapes Europe’s behaviour. The Dutch government’s September 2025 seizure of Nexperia, a Chinese-owned chipmaker, offered the clearest sign yet of how far European governments have been drawn into the US-led confrontation with Beijing. Presented as a matter of national security, the move came after The Hague declared Nexperia’s Chinese ownership a threat to the Netherlands’ strategic interests.

The company at the heart of this decision has its own complex history. Nexperia began as the standard products business unit of NXP Semiconductors. It was sold to a consortium of Chinese investors in 2017 and later became one of several European tech firms to join China’s expanding industrial portfolio. By the late 2010s, that portfolio already included Supercell, Sumo, Stunlock and Miniclip in gaming, Kuka in robotics, WorldFirst in currency exchange and the mobile advertising start-up MobPartner. Europe, which long welcomed Chinese investment as a sign of openness, now treats those same partnerships as strategic threats.

The scale of those acquisitions grew alongside rising pressure within Europe to safeguard sectors deemed vital to national security. Governments began invoking emergency powers to block or reverse Chinese ownership of what they now call strategic assets. Nexperia was not the first company to be clawed back by a European state. In 2022, the UK ordered it to sell its stake in Newport Wafer Fab, while France seized Ommic in 2023. In the US, the Chinese firm Kunlun Tech was ordered to sell its 60 percent stake in Grindr in 2019.

Globally, these tit-for-tat responses have become common. In 2024, Beijing restricted exports of key minerals used in semiconductor manufacturing and tightened rules on the sale of foreign chips after security concerns over Nvidia’s products. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that European governments have grown more wary of the transfer of critical assets and intellectual property to China.

The instinct to protect national industries is hardly new. Yet for all the Western outrage over Chinese technology theft, it is worth remembering that Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the US, openly encouraged what would now be called industrial espionage. During the early years of the American Republic, the English-born engineer Samuel Slater memorised Richard Arkwright’s water-frame technology and helped establish America’s first water-powered cotton mill in Rhode Island. Hamilton later praised such imitation in his 1791 Report on Manufactures.

Fast forward to 2025, and when the so-called “Magnificent Seven” (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla) entered the trillion-dollar valuation club, their rise was attributed to genius and innovation. Yet when they falter, as in the Tesla versus BYD competition, blame often shifts to external factors such as unfair regulation or intellectual theft. US exceptionalism is cast as merit-based, while China’s ambition for technological leadership is condemned as unscrupulous.

Why, then, would a European nation insert itself into a Sino-American contest for semiconductor supremacy in which the continent is a distant third?

European leaders argue that the answer lies in safeguarding sovereignty and reducing dependence on authoritarian regimes. But the economic consequences are already becoming clear. Most of Nexperia’s production takes place in China, leaving the company unable to meet demand without that capacity. Since the takeover, several of its operations have slowed, and hundreds of employees in the Netherlands, the UK and Germany face redundancy. Global carmakers such as Volkswagen and Volvo have warned of possible production delays due to shortages of automotive chips, which are vital for vehicle electronics and control systems.

The Netherlands is not alone. Across Europe, governments have embraced the rhetoric of “de-coupling” from China even as their economies remain deeply entangled with it. The seizure of Nexperia aligns closely with European proponents of Donald Trump’s “liberation day” discourse, his campaign for economic disentanglement from China framed as moral redemption, and it foreshadows further clawbacks across the Maastricht-born union. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s call for “de-risking rather than decoupling” now rings hollow against this backdrop.

There is an implicit capitulation in all this, one that began with the Marshall Plan in 1948 and continues to shape Europe’s responses to crises from the Russo-Ukrainian war to the present contest over technology. Each episode has reaffirmed the same pattern: when Washington redraws its global lines, Europe adjusts accordingly. The Dutch seizure of Nexperia may be justified in the language of sovereignty, but it exposes how little sovereignty remains. As the US and China battle for technological dominance, Europe once again finds itself not as a player in the new order, but as its terrain.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.