Taiwan Minister Says 'Consensus' Reached With US To Shield Semiconductor Industry From Tariffs

In a Financial Times interview published on Nov. 20, Wu said that Taiwan will support the United States in building its chip industry, and in return, the United States will offer tariff relief for the island’s semiconductor sector.

“Of course, there’s the recipes of how to make the chips, but it’s also about the science park management, attracting companies, integrating academic research with industry,” Wu told the news outlet. “No other country has done what we have done.”

Taiwanese Economic Minister Kung Ming-hsin told reporters on Nov. 22 that Taiwan has not finalized any trade agreement with the United States yet, but he noted that Taiwan’s negotiators are “working hard on it,” local media reported.

Taiwan hopes to secure a deal with the Trump administration that would ease the current 20 percent U.S. tariffs on its exports. U.S. President Donald Trump in August threatened tariffs of up to 300 percent on chip imports.

Wu said that Washington is unlikely to impose such high tariffs on Taiwan’s semiconductors because the administration understands that “punishing Taiwan is not in their interests.”

Taiwan’s dominant role in global chip manufacturing, led by chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., has been labeled as a deterrent against the Chinese regime’s military aggression, a concept known as the “silicon shield.”

Wu said in the interview that Taiwan was looking to create a “second silicon shield” in areas such as drones, robotics, and medical technology to diversify its strategic assets beyond chips.

However, Wu noted that Taiwan intends to keep its cutting-edge research and development within the island, citing potential security concerns if the sector were relocated overseas.

“If we move our [research and development] overseas, it’ll be dangerous for us,” he said. “New weapons and defense systems rely on advanced chips.”

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told NewsNation on Sept. 27 that the two sides have discussed producing equal shares of the semiconductor chips required to meet U.S. demand.

Washington wants Taiwan to move half of its semiconductor production to the United States, Lutnick said. Ultimately, the goal is for the United States to capture at least 40 percent of the semiconductor market, which would require $500 billion in domestic investment, he said.

“That has been the conversation we had with Taiwan, [telling them] that ‘you have to understand it’s vital for you to have us produce 50 percent,’” he said.

In response to Lutnick’s comments, the Office of Trade Negotiations of Taiwan’s Executive Yuan, the highest administrative organ in Taiwan, said that it would exercise prudence in trade negotiations with the United States, according to Taiwanese media outlets.

That’s how diplomacy has always worked unless a nation is totally self sufficient - and even then...

How we got to this position specifically? I’ve posted the below before but it bears repeating - and it’s not all the Left that’s responsible.

A lot of our current problems are due to prior administrations and Congresses (plural for both) absolutely crapping on not just the manufacturing sector but the chip foundry sector. In fact, they hit the chips harder than they did traditional manufacturing, in part because they were mostly oldsters who did not (and in many cases, still do not) understand the importance of silicon prowess in the current era.

There are still some {tech products} made here - but in many cases they are hamstrung by the need for computer chips made overseas. Why are the chips made overseas? Because both Left and Right ran off US tech production of all kinds.

It’s (the loss of tech manufacture and chip foundries) not all the Left’s fault either. (To give an example of the Right screwing things up:) In the early days, Apple had several US computer factories. They ended up moving and closing most of them for various reasons. The one in Carrollton, Texas closed because the locals decided to be idiots.

The plant opened in 1980. One of the benefits of working for Apple at the time was that no matter who you lived with, they could be on your health insurance. Didn’t matter if it was your spouse, your live-in significant other, your sibling(s), etc - they could be on your insurance. Many people benefited from this - being able to get things like cancer treatments and life saving surgeries for their families and loved ones (the factory began operations pre-AIDS epidemic). Well, the local Biblethumping Idiot Club decided that this meant that Apple was promoting ‘living in sin’ and homosexuality and went out of their way to make doing business difficult for them. They picketed, protested, obstructed everything they could in city council and generally did the Handmaiden’s Tale shaming routine, even though almost none of the employees was gay. Eventually Apple got tired of the crap and closed the plant at the first excuse they got in 1985. The Biblethumping Idiots Club were very proud of themselves and were looking forward to a “right-thinking God-fearing tech manufacturer moving in to the facility.” Well, that didn’t happen. No tech manufacturer would touch Carrollton after that, even pleas to Texas Instruments to move in fell on deaf ears and said Club members were moaning for years and years about how they didn’t understand why no new major tech company would move in. This sort of thing happened in more than a few communities in the US and that contributed to companies choosing to not open new plants in the US. And oh, yeah, a bunch of people died with the cessation of their health benefits, which was an actual human cost. (DFW in 1985 was *not* a place with a lot of large employers that had health insurance that would have household benefits. The oil crash happens the next year and the economy promptly went to crap.) But the Idiot Club was really happy about how they’d driven off that immorality!

Carrollton *still* doesn’t have any major manufacturing employers, and it’s mostly a bedroom community these days as a result. And while Apple has recently been opening a couple of US plants again, they’re still leery - and for good reason. Most of the problem of that particular Idiots Club were solved by time/death and now we don’t have that as so much of a problem any more in Carrollton - but even so, the factories never came back.

We need to police our own better.

We don’t hate Congress enough, no. We also don’t hate the obstructionists/idiots on our own side enough.

So, when we’ve deliberately run off all of a now-blatantly-obvious-to-most-thinking-people industry and have to rely on others to rebuild it, it is understandable that those people would demand concessions and prices for their help. We demanded extortionate payment from Britain in gold for our Lend-Lease help in WW2, so we’re not innocent ourselves - to name just one example. We made a HUGE mistake as a nation and now we have to pay for it. We would do well to fire anyone still in government of either party that contributed to our decimation of the tech manufacturing industries - no matter how ‘good’ they’ve been otherwise.

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