More recently, after the Trump administration blocked the Broadcom bid, White House actions have been problematic for Qualcomm. In April, the administration issued an order preventing American companies from selling components to China’s ZTE after finding that ZTE violated United States sanctions involving North Korea and Iran. ZTE is a major Qualcomm customer.
Mr. Trump later softened his stance toward ZTE, which agreed to changes. The Commerce Department removed ZTE from a list of proscribed customers on Friday, enabling Qualcomm to resume selling chips to the Chinese company.
It’s unclear if China might now relent on NXP, or keep withholding approval of the deal to push back against the Trump administration’s trade tariffs. “One weapon is obviously the Qualcomm weapon,” said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank.
China’s antitrust authority, the State Administration for Market Regulation, did not respond to a faxed request for comment. The country would be the ninth jurisdiction to complete a customary antitrust review of Qualcomm’s NXP deal; eight others, including the United States, have approved it.
An NXP spokeswoman referred to recent remarks by Richard Clemmer, the company’s chief executive, who said the chip maker continued to believe in the Qualcomm transaction.
Mr. Mollenkopf embarked on the NXP deal nearly two years ago to reduce Qualcomm’s dependence on the maturing mobile phone market. While Qualcomm primarily makes mobile chips and earns most of its profit from royalty payments from handset makers, NXP sells more than 14,000 different chips that are widely used in cars, mobile payments and other applications.
The deal, announced in October 2016, seemed ambitious from the start. NXP has nearly as many employees as Qualcomm — about 30,000 — and a tradition of operating factories, which still make some of its products. Qualcomm has always relied on other companies to make the chips it designs.
