The US chip war against China will only partially advance in 2023. After unveiling sweeping new export restrictions in October, Washington appears to have gotten friendly governments like Japan and the Netherlands on board. But a full anti-China lineup will be tricky as global demand for semiconductors slows.

The latest US trade rules prohibit Chinese buyers from accessing high-performance microprocessors used in supercomputers, as well as the software and equipment needed to make semiconductors above certain technology thresholds, including high-end memory chips. from China’s YMTC.

This measure has led Apple to freeze its plans to buy components from YMTC, according to Nikkei. However, most of the chips made in China and shipped to this country are of less advanced technologies that are not affected by the restrictions. That softens the blow for both Chinese and US companies. In 2021, Chinese imports of integrated circuits and related equipment exceeded $466 billion.

The outlook for Chinese-dependent companies in South Korea, Japan and the Netherlands is more uncertain. Memory chip giants Samsung and SK Hynix both have factories inside China and will not be able to maintain them without a US license. Both have been granted a one-year exemption, but it is unclear what will happen after that.

For Dutch company ASML, which has a monopoly on advanced chip-making equipment, the outlook is equally bleak. It had already stopped exporting its most advanced machines to China. But Washington is pressuring the Netherlands and Japan to also ban the less sophisticated ASML tools and their Japanese counterparts. Both governments have agreed in principle to adopt at least some of the US restrictions, according to Bloomberg. But the devil is in the details. The Dutch Minister of Commerce, Liesje Schreinemacher, already said in November that her government “will not copy the US measures one by one.”

The cuts would be damaging for the Veldhoven-based company: €2.7bn, or 15% of its total revenue, came from China in 2021. Japanese rival Nikon billed more than €1.1bn in China, 28% of the total.

Slowing demand is another cause for concern: Chip sales will shrink 4% to $557 billion in 2023, a sharp setback from 26% growth in 2021, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics.

This is likely to make companies reluctant to quickly and fully accept Washington’s requests. Indecision will play in favor of China. It will buy you time to stock up on foreign components and tools, and help President Xi Jinping woo his business partners. As Beijing knows, wars are rarely fought and won unilaterally.