Hold on to your mobile phones, civilians, this is gonna get rough. If you thought the Sopranos and Corleones were intimidating, check this out.

ASML, a Dutch firm that currently is the world’s only manufacturer of the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines that produce the most advanced chips, is repeatedly getting stiff-armed by the US – intimidated into breaking deals and told not to sell a widening range of goods to China.

Back at the beginning of the year, after a sit-down with the consigliere for the White House, the Netherlands Government thought it would be a very good idea to ban future exports to China of DUV (deep ultraviolet) lithography machines. It blocked ASML at the last minute from shipping three machines, each worth tens of millions of dollars. That, it turns out, wasn’t enough to please Washington.

The US Government recently sent a couple of Made Men around to say that from now on ASML could not even service the DUV machines it had already sold to China! Bada bing bada boom – the Dutchies got the message.

“We are in talks, good talks, and we are also watching out very specifically for the economic interests of ASML,” Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said last week.

Peter Wennink, who recently decided it was best to retire as CEO of ASML disagrees.

“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. I have problems with that,” he said from an undisclosed location.

Asia Financial reported in September that Beijing had warned the Dutch chip toolmaker “risks losing access to the Chinese market ‘permanently’ if it implements the latest US export curbs”.

China accounted for 45% of ASML’s sales in the second quarter of the........

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