And in two weeks there will be a special executive order to free his Tech Bro oligarch buddies from these tarrifs so Meta and Elmo are not forced to pay a dollar extra.
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I've been looking at doing a new pc build but wanted to wait for the new GPUs coming out. Looks like I should just my new build before prices are stupid.
I did mine a couple months ago because I anticipated this happening.
How to reunite China and Taiwan 101
Peace in our time, what a great deal maker!
I don't get the goal here. It's not just that existing fabs are in Taiwan, I thought it was the knowledge was as well.
I was under the impression that we'd built a couple of fabs here and they're not productive due to a knowledge deficit. Maybe I'm uninformed.
It seems, to my uninformed self, that if we impose tariffs we'd be strengthening Taiwan/China relations. Wouldn't China still serve as a middle man?
I don't see us manufacturing when the dollar is so high relative to foreign currency; add in the lack of knowledge and facilities and I'm not sure what you get.
I truly believe these are his way of soliciting bribes from foreign and domestic businesses.
They're going to have to pay him to get around them.
If TSMC doesn't want to set up shop in the USA, are the USA going to be able to produce chips on par with what TSMC can fab?
they are building a plant in Arizona, but i doubt it'll ever be as good as Taiwan can do, not just because Taiwan has the skills but if Taiwan doesn't have this then what's the point of protecting it? It's sort of a way to say, if you want to to continue to access the best chips in the world you should protect us from China
Taiwan are very clear about this; they (correctly) consider their monopoly on high end chip manufacturing to be an urgent matter of national defence and it is of the highest priority to them to keep it solely within Taiwan. They will never allow their best processes to be exported.
The US could probably do it... With hundreds of billions of government incentives to rapidly stand up the entire supply chain... Which would still take at least a decade. The machines that TSMC uses are made by ASML and themselves have a global supply chain of over 500 separate companies and are backordered for several years due to their inherent value.
In short, no.
Intel has been trying to get itself into that position for years, with huge amounts of public money being pumped in, and it is struggling so badly the company lost patience and fired the CEO who had the best chance of getting this done. And, as others have said, it doesn't look like TSMC is about to let its US fabs do the most advanced stuff even if they could.
So this move will just make the best technology less accessible to the USA and tech products more expensive for Americans, for the foreseeable future.
From what I understand one of the things that is protecting Taiwan from China is their fabs. They will fight for their lives to make sure they are protected by this.
As someone with family over in Taiwan, I really want them to be okay. Things are getting depressing globally.
To avoid this, the administration would need to introduce exemptions, just like it did with China-made graphics cards and motherboards years ago.
If that is the approach, it would ensure tech monopoly for 5 years for all of the oligarchy that kisses his diaper.
More major issues with this is that while high end Chip production may be high value manufacturing, motherboards, electronics, and assembly is not, and there would likely be an export of chips to somewhere else to import finished products.
US/Trump explicit hatred for world is likely to get retributive tariffs, that makes chip plants unproductive investments, though Trump is hoping to have high foreign ownership/investment in those plants.
In 2022, the export share of Taiwan integrated circuits to US was just 2.46%, although in early 2024, total (all goods) Taiwan exports had US take lead over China for the first time.
That both US and China are decoupling from Taiwan is going to reduce any geopolitical subservience impulse that provokes a war with China. Taiwan may get closer to China instead of begging for more US "friendship".