Honda Motor has confirmed it will be halting production at three of its China car plants by a further two weeks due to ongoing supply constraints.
The factories, operated with Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC), were planned to restart on 5th January but will now resume on 19th January, according to Honda. The company said the impact is “relatively controllable” and expects to recover output over the year without affecting customer deliveries.
The disruption is likely linked to the Dutch government taking control of Nexperia, the Chinese-owned semiconductor manufacturer based in the Netherlands, following a ruling by the Dutch Enterprise Chamber and amid escalating geopolitical tensions surrounding technology and trade. This has sparked a global supply chain crisis.
In September 2025, the US Department of Commerce issued a new rule that expanded the scope of the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Entity List. The Agency’s new rule, as outlined on the BIS website, stipulates that any company that is “at least 50 percent owned by one or more entities on the Entity List or the Military End-User (MEU) List will itself automatically be subject to Entity List/MEU List restrictions.”
Nexperia was acquired by Chinese firm Wingtech Technology in 2019, and the technology company was placed on the BIS Entity List in December 2024. Therefore, based on the BIS’s new ‘Affiliates Rule’, Nexperia itself fell into the scope of the Entity List, becoming subject to the same export controls as its Chinese parent company.
Whilst Honda has not directly attributed its production halt to Nexperia, Nexperia does punch above its weight in terms of the number of chips it supplies to the global auto industry.
With revenue of around $2 billion in 2024, the chipmaker sells roughly 60% of its products to auto manufacturers like Volkswagen, Toyota, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz. The company doesn’t manufacture the most cutting-edge chips for its automotive customers. It does, however, play a disproportionately large role in supplying basic chips like transistors and diodes, over which it controls a 40% market share.
Honda isn’t the only automaker suffering, back in October Volkswagen told its workers that a production stoppage could be imminent due to the supply chain issues triggered by the Nexperia crisis. “In view of the dynamic situation,” a Volkswagen spokesperson told Reuters, “We cannot rule out an impact on production in the short term.”
