China's commerce ministry warned on Saturday of a renewed global semiconductor supply chain crisis, after Nexperia's Netherlands-based headquarters disabled office IT accounts for all employees at its Chinese operations from the evening of March 3rd, according to a Reuters report. Beijing said the action "provoked new conflicts" in an already-fractured corporate standoff and warned that the Netherlands would bear "full responsibility" if chip shortages spread globally.
Nexperia, which controls roughly 40% of the global market for transistors and diodes, isn’t purely an automotive supplier. The discrete semiconductors it manufactures appear throughout consumer electronics, PC power supplies, motherboards, and chargers — pretty much everything — meaning a sustained supply disruption would carry consequences well beyond car production lines.