Comment on Taiwan refuses to move half of U.S.-bound chip production to American shores — trade discussion to be focused on Section 232 investigation for preferential deal on semiconductors

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UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

Good. It was a naked attempt at a shakedown, and also 100% a bluff.

It takes more than a few years to spin up a chip fab, with an outlay on the order of hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars. Even if they’d been eager to take the US up on the deal (and why would they want to relinquish a functional monopoly on cutting end processors?), there’s no way they’d be dealing with the same administration by the time it was completed. Even if Trump was still in office, the fucker changes his mind every five minutes. Not conducive to long-term economic projects like this.

Now is emphatically not the time to undermine their strategic defense policy, which largely revolves around “if the CCP invades, we will melt our chip fabs to slag”.

TSMC won’t have their edge forever. China’s fabs are catching up quickly, with 5nm chips in production and 3nm chips possible in a few more years. This was a good strategy when China needed to import these chips and Taiwan had the market cornered. But if TSMC’s rigged-to-explode labs go up in smoke after China’s a major player in the market, that actually benefits Beijing.

Strapping yourself with Semtex might be a savvy play in a single moment, but it’s not going to work long term.

That’s before you consider the real threat Taiwan poses to China is as a launchpad for US strikes into the interior.

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