Posted on 07/31/2022 4:05:55 AM PDT by FarCenter
A US draft act seeking to increase the amount of domestically made semiconductors moved one step closer to being signed into law on Thursday after it was passed by the US House of Representatives, but it is unlikely to challenge Taiwan’s critical role as a major global chip supplier, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said.
Instead, it could help Taiwanese chipmakers by financing manufacturing projects in the US, the ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Taiwan serves as a global semiconductor manufacturing hub and local manufacturers continue to invest in advanced processes to upgrade technologies, which has made the Taiwanese semiconductor industry resilient and competitive in the global market, it said.
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“After 50 years of efforts in developing its semiconductor industry through investment and talent cultivation, Taiwan has been on the top of the industry in terms of production efficiency, establishment of a comprehensive supply chain and innovations,” the ministry said. “Taiwan’s status as a critical player in the global semiconductor sector will not be affected.”
Taiwan has taken the lead in global semiconductor production. Local firms Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), a pure-play wafer foundry operator, and ASE Technology Holding Co, an IC packaging and testing services provider, are the largest in the world in their respective sectors.
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TSMC is investing US$12 billion to build a 12-inch fab in Arizona using its sophisticated 5-nanometer process.
Earlier this week, TSMC wrote on LinkedIn that the Arizona plant had recently held a “topping out” ceremony when the new facility’s last beam was placed.
The new plant would start production in 2024, as scheduled, it said.
Hsinchu-based GlobalWafers Co, the world’s third-largest supplier of silicon wafers, last month announced that it is planning to invest US$5 billion to build a wafer plant in Sherman, Texas.
GlobalWafers said it expects the construction of the new plant to begin in November, given that it secures expected subsidies under the CHIPS act before the US Congress goes into recess next month.
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However, it was unclear whether Taiwanese and other foreign manufacturers setting up fabs in the US would be able to offset the greater cost of producing in the US, including higher wages, and whether the higher costs would be passed on to consumers.
Taiwanese chips’ competitiveness in part stems from relatively low cost of hiring engineers in the nation.
I bought some extra processors so as to be sure I would have them if needed....good thing as they are showing delivery dates longer than a year!
A lot of Chinese who fled China to Taiwan were from the intellectual class.
Many of them sent their sons to the US for education and training in engineering and manufacturing. Some of them were copying every document they could and sending them back to Taiwan. Others worked in the US semiconductor industry and then went back to Taiwan.
Morris Chang is a good example. Born in China, escaped to Hong Kong in '48, BS and MS from MIT, 3 Years at Sylvania, 25 years at Texas Instruments, PhD from Stanford, recruited to become chairman and president of the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan, where he founded TSMC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Chang
“Its funny how such a tiny island with a small population managed to wrest control of the very high end of the chip making industry, even as America slept.”
America was not asleep. Congress and the Executive branch opened US markets to the rest of the world, through one sided trade agreements, and Wall Street invested American capital, essentially the savings of American workers, to build foreign owned contract manufacturing infrastructure outside the US. Meanwhile finance MBA’s and lawyers gained control of the executive suites of US corporations, replacing the manufacturing and sales executives who once ran US corporations. These executives viewed workers as numbers on a spreadsheet to be eliminated or used. Unlike previous generations of executives who came up through the ranks, the new Ivy League business and law school trained executives were members of the global community. They had no loyalty to employees or local communities where the US factories were located.
The new financial CEO’s focused on financial tinkering to maximize their own wealth through stock options and stock price manipulation. During the 1990’s the trend was to take advantage of the “free trade” agreements negotiated by government. Instead of investing capital to build new company owned factories in the United States corporations shifting to buying from the foreign owned contract manufacturing operations Wall Street banks financed overseas. The capital freed up by not investing in US bricks and mortar was used to buy back stock, and buy up smaller competitors, thereby driving up stock prices and the wealth of corporate executives and Wall Street traders.
Along the way politicians doing the bidding of large corporations and Wall Street investors were rewarded with insider trading deals, campaign finance money, and lucrative board seats and consulting deals once retiring from Congress. Their children and relatives were also employed by big companies. At the same time senior government bureaucrats developed their own ties to the multinational corporations. The relationship between Big Pharma and the FDA where Big Pharma pays government “scientists”, who are supposed to be overseeing Big Pharma, is one example. Similar relationships exist in the Defense industry and between senior government bureaucrats and the big tech firms who spy on American citizens for intelligence agencies and law enforcement.
The only people sleeping were the the middle class and working class American people whose jobs were disappearing overseas and who continued to vote for the politicians working with foreign countries, Wall Street banks, and multinational corporations to export their jobs.
The U.S. is preparing for China’s invasion of Taiwan.
I think it was deliberate US foreign policy to allocate consumer electronics to Japan in the '60s and semiconductors to Taiwan in the '80s. The purpose was to strengthen Japan as a bulwark against the USSR and Taiwan as a bulwark against China.
US manufacturers of products like TVs, tape decks, and integrated circuits were forced out of business to satisfy the geopolitical objectives of the national security establishment.
The push to send software work to India is similar.
Yes.
But why were American kids busy studying law and woke crap at university? Nothing stopped ur kids from studying engineering.
We have a far bigger population and were far ahead before.
Partly because they could make more money as lawyers or get a degree more easily with the woke crap.
But mostly cultural. The US culture does not support a first class scientific and engineering establishment. We have consistently relied on immigrants from other cultures that do. Look at the scientists that were leaders of the Manhattan Project. They were mostly immigrants or first generation Americans. Most of my professors were Europeans. Now most would be Asians.
For a while, there was a supply of students from small towns and farms that went into science and engineering. The first generation of astronauts came from this background. But that has dried up.
“Its funny how such a tiny island with a small population managed to wrest control of the very high end of the chip making industry, even as America slept.”
Okay, this is me saying something serious and hoping not to sound like a conspiracy theorist. The real people who run any organization, a company, a church, a government, are not the people at the top. They can be run by people at the top, but generally, the people at the top set guidelines and policies and leave it to people lower down to implement those policies and guidelines. You can view any organization as a large number of independent “Brownian motion” elements covered by a tablecloth called the organization. Occasionally the tablecloth can be seen to move one way or another and observers say, “Ah! the (organization) is doing this or that.” But that’s not necessarily true. It’s that suddenly a number of Brownian movers under the tablecloth have combined their movements in one direction as opposed to another.
Our government’s leaders are more or less transitory. There are about 540 elected people who “control” our government. Under them are cadres of permanent employees. You can bet that if those permanent employees don’t like a particular policy or guideline, they do what the Japanese call “killing with yes.” They say, “Yes sir! We’ll do that right away.” and then...absolutely no progress is made.
Here’s what I think happened. Back in the Cold War, when Nixon went to China, a bunch of the real people who make policy, that cadre of permanent employees who implement policy got together and foresaw that China would stay communist. They decided to make a free and independent Taiwan an integral part of the world such that America would be FORCED to protect it. They did that by guiding investment and knowledge to Taiwan to give Taiwan the world’s leadership in a critical (some would say THE critical) industry that America is utterly dependent on.
Most likely, those Cold Warriors are dead and gone. But the tool they crafted to force America to do their will is alive and well and doing its job.
CHIPS act no threat to local chip prowess: China
Biden knows to not cross the boss.
Well yeah because with the size of this corporate welfare program it will not result in one single microchip factory or a single job making chips. Let’s go Solyndra...
The tree huggers and regulators would never allow the resources required to make chips be harvested on American soil.
Having been in the business world for over thirty years I’ve observed and studied the lifecycle of companies. An entrepreneur with a vision starts a company. He is laser focused on creating a world beating product. The product takes over the market. Then, by timing out or by getting frustrated by what the company has become, the creator leaves. The company is then run by accountants. Since it is public it has to ever increase its stock price. Quarterly goals…making money…becomes more important than making products. HR starts polluting the company with liberal environmental and social goals. Critical people are driven off and only the dull, plodding types are left. Every bad manager, every manager promoted for sleeping with someone, or because he’s a golfing buddy, drives off the more qualified people. Incompetents are put in critical positions because they are no danger to the people above them. The people above time out and the incompetents get promoted into jobs they have no idea how to perform. Even more good people leave, and the company slides into ever increasing irrelevance. Then the government steps in with helicopter money and the industry dies because the government’s goals are not the same as making money…see the Chevy Volt as an example. This is the point Intel is at now. We are screwed.
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