Amidst tariffs brawl with US, China is delaying reviews of Qualcomm's NXP deal and Bain's acquisition of Toshiba's chip unit, raising fears both deals may fail
Context & Ripple Effects
In April 2018, with Washington and Beijing trading tariff threats, China's regulators went quiet on two high-stakes chip deals awaiting review: Qualcomm's purchase of NXP and Bain's takeover of Toshiba's memory unit. Both needed Beijing's sign-off as their last remaining approval, so the delay alone put closing timelines at risk.
The standoff became a template. Weeks later came reports of an imminent conditional approval over dominance concerns in areas like mobile payments, followed by conflicting sourcing — Reuters heard no approval was in hand while other outlets said otherwise (leaving the deal's status genuinely unclear). Seven years on, the same leverage reappears: rising doubt over China clearing Synopsys' $35B Ansys acquisition in the 2025 tariff fight, against a reported Beijing list of US tech targets including Broadcom and Synopsys.
First-order effects
- Qualcomm and Bain are left with deals whose final regulatory gate is held by an adversary government — every week of silence pushes them closer to walk-away deadlines, and Toshiba's planned exit from its chip unit stalls with them.
Second-order effects
- NXP shareholders and Toshiba's creditors face repricing risk: if Beijing's conditions harden or approval never lands, both sellers must weigh lower bids or alternative buyers rather than wait out a political process they cannot control.
Third-order effects
- Antitrust review becomes a standing instrument of US-China tech conflict: any American semiconductor firm whose M&A requires SAMR clearance now carries a structural political risk premium, a pattern the 2025 Synopsys-Ansys uncertainty shows repeating rather than fading.
The trend: Beijing is converting merger approvals for US chip companies into a recurring trade-war lever, with each tariff escalation putting pending cross-border semiconductor deals at risk of delay or collapse.