ASML, China, and ultraviolet tech: One of Trump's biggest under-the-radar victories

Over the past few years, one of the Trump administration's biggest accomplishments has flown almost entirely under the radar.

Long story in a nutshell: The high-tech industry has been in a brutal, cutthroat rivalry over semiconductor chips for decades. At this point, only Taiwan and South Korea can produce the world's most advanced chips (7-nanometers (NM) and below; Taiwan is already advancing even further down to 2 and 3 nanometers. The lower the NM number, the more powerful the chip is.)

China has been trying fervently to catch up and overtake America, Taiwan and South Korea in this industry by acquiring extreme ultraviolet (EUVL) tech from Holland, which is essential for making the latest chips. But the Trump administration placed heavy pressure on the Dutch to cancel the sale (Holland's ASML is the world's leading EUVL nation) and the Dutch assented. This is huge, because if the sale had gone through, it could have given China eventual dominance in this field - chips are to high-tech what petroleum is to transportation.

Instead, China remains a generation behind for the time being, while Trump has bought time for U.S. allies like Taiwan and South Korea to continue pushing ahead and remaining the primary suppliers of chips to America.

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