Posted on 05/14/2020 6:02:29 PM PDT by Candor7
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has been in discussions for several years with both TSMC and Intel to build advanced chip manufacturing plants in the U.S. and extract U.S. supply chain needs from China and southeast Asia. It appears his efforts, and the emphasis on global supply-chain shifts from President Trump, are getting results.
According to numerous media reports Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is likely to announce this week they will build an advanced chip manufacturing facility in Arizona. A manufacturing facility for advanced 5 nanometer chip manufacturing is a steep investment decision costing around $10 billion.
This shift in a high-tech supply chain will align with President Trump’s prior discussions with Tim Cook the CEO of Apple which led to a decision to invest in Texas. TSMC is a chip supplier for Apple products; and Apple is moving to the 5nm processors in new devices. It looks like the movement of advanced industrial products away from China is underway.
(Via Appleinsider) – Apple supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is set to announce that it plans to build an advanced chip factory in Arizona.
Taiwan-based TSMC is the world’s largest contract manufacturer of silicon chipsets and has long been Apple’s primary supplier of A-series chips.
Now, TSMC is said to be on the verge of announcing new plans to build out an advanced 5-nanometer facility in Arizona, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The decision, reached by TSMC executives at a board meeting in Taiwan on Tuesday, could be announced as soon as Friday. (link)
This move is a direct result of President Trump playing the economic long-game with an assembly of interests… one result within a much bigger picture.
President Trump has been creating a dual position for several years; this is very unique because it is the same strategy used by China. By expressing a panda mask, yet concealing the underlying dragon, President Trump’s policy to China is a mirror of themselves.
Historic Chinese geopolitical policy, vis-a-vis their totalitarian control over political sentiment (action) and diplomacy through silence, is evident in the strategic use of the space between carefully chosen words, not just the words themselves.
Each time China takes aggressive action (red dragon) China projects a panda face through silence and non-response to opinion of that action;…. and the action continues. The red dragon has a tendency to say one necessary thing publicly, while manipulating another necessary thing privately. The Art of War.
President Trump is the first U.S. President to understand how the red dragon hides behind the panda mask.
First he got their attention with tariffs. Then… On one hand President Trump has engaged in very public and friendly trade negotiations with China (panda approach); yet on the other hand, long before the Wuhan virus, Trump fractured their global supply chains, influenced the movement of industrial goods to alternate nations, and incentivized an exodus of manufacturing (dragon result).
It is specifically because he understands that Panda is a mask that President Trump messages warmth toward the Chinese people, and pours vociferous praise upon Xi Jinping, while simultaneously confronting the geopolitical doctrine of the Xi regime.
In essence Trump is mirroring the behavior of China while confronting their economic duplicity.
There is no doubt in my mind that President Trump has a very well thought out long-term strategy regarding China. President Trump takes strategic messaging toward the people of china very importantly. President Trump has, very publicly, complimented the friendship he feels toward President Xi Jinping; and praises Chairman Xi for his character, strength and purposeful leadership.
To build upon that projected and strategic message – President Trump seeded the background by appointing Ambassador Terry Branstad, a 30-year personal friend of President Xi Jinping.
To enhance and amplify the message – and broadcast cultural respect – President Trump used Mar-a-Lago as the venue for their first visit, not the White House. And President Trump’s beautiful granddaughter, Arabella, sweetly serenaded the Chinese First Family twice in Mandarin Chinese song showing the utmost respect for the guests and later for the hosts.
All of this activity mirrors the duplicity of China. From the November 2017 tour of Asia to the January 2020 China phase-1 trade deal, President Trump has been positioning, for an economic decoupling and a complete realignment of global trade and manufacturing.
This announcement by TSMC today is one small part of a much bigger economic reset currently underway. Beijing isn’t stupid, they can see themselves being outwitted and outplayed. President Trump is winning.
Among other things, there is the fact that chip foundries create chips from silica. Silica is refined/extracted from sand.
What does Arizona have an awful lot of?
The business climate has a lot to do with it too.
What ever happened to those guys in I-da-ho [Micron?]
Due to a lot of brain drain and stupid decisions in the last couple decades, most commodity chips are not designed in the US but elsewhere. There are consequences when your universities are churning out mostly people with gender studies and underwater basket weaving degrees.
Micron’s still around and doing reasonably well. They’ve had some struggles in the last decade or so and no longer are able to produce all their products in North America - they’ve had to take some production to China to remain cost competitive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micron_Technology
The exodus from silicon valley started to AZ and NM. There is existing talent there with process engineers and technicians. Probably their universities have good eng programs.
Defense and aerospace contractors are big in AZ too.
Yes, but there’s not really enough to keep ahead of foreign competition in many cases. Lots of those engineers are older and not necessarily as creative as they formerly were.
Go look at the in house competition between Intel design departments that resulted in the Core-i line of processors. The US department designs were clearly inferior in each round of competition until Intel gave up and just let their Israeli studio deal with it. Also see what happened to Motorola/Freescale towards the end of their PowerPC production - same basic kind of thing, no new blood and the old engineers wouldn’t get radical.
Case in point: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/made-in-israel-intel-launches-most-powerful-processor-yet-587698
C’mon AMD/Radeon, start building here. The only Team Red I support.
Why don’t we just offer to move all the Taiwanese and their factories here....many of them already speak some English....China can have the Island...we’ll get the tech and the Taiwanese people.....I’m being facetious of course...but Taiwanese corporations may need to consider a safe haven for their businesses and factories and their workers should China continue to speak aggressively about invading the Island. America might just be that backstop needed.
Taiwan has plants in ChiCom land.
That's my President.
We need to stop sourcing important materials and products to China.
It’s disgusting.
Ultimately, the most important stuff - food / health / security - needs to be sourced entirely domestically.
En route to that point, getting stuff out of the hands of China is a good start.
There are a lot of better countries to work with.
Apple’s investment in Texas is on the margins (Mac Pro). A $10,000,000,000 chip facility for 5nm production is a big thing. Yay! Arizona!
“In February 2019, the first microSD card with a storage capacity of 1 terabyte (TB) was announced by Micron.”
That’s pretty impressive.
What are you talking about?
I’m one of those 580 million enthusiasts. :)
Thx for article. Intel does production in Israel as well, despite Iran missiles.
May not take much to get them to source production fabs in AZ, NM, and Tx. Can get all the sand for polysilicon wafers easily but may need a pipeline for fresh water from processed Baja or Pacific water.
Not so marginal. Apple’s always had quite a lot of investment in Texas, a large campus in Austin since IIRC the 80s. They used to have a computer plant in Carrollton outside Dallas through the 1980s until the local neanderthal bible thumpers (as opposed to intelligent bible thumpers) screamed about how Apple employee health care plans allowed coverage of an unmarried partner (as they put it, “Living in sin with a woman”) and started making Carrollton very hostile to Apple. At the next opportunity they had, Apple axed the plant.
Remember kids, the enticements of China aren’t the only reason why industry leaves the US. Local idiots play a part too.
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