Posted on 07/12/2023 3:30:37 AM PDT by FarCenter
Contrary to US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and other high-tech nationalists’ wishes, the semiconductor industry is not migrating back to America any time soon.
On the contrary, the globalization of production capacity and new technology development is accelerating away from the US. Ironically, Biden administration subsidies for establishing semi-conductor factories in the US and export restrictions on high-end chips and chip-making equipment are helping to drive the process – and not just in China.
Last February 23, Raimondo delivered an impassioned speech to students at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, at which she said:
I want the United States to be the only country in the world where every company capable of producing leading-edge chips will have a significant R&D and high-volume manufacturing presence…. It is America’s obligation to lead. We must push like no time before.
That is an ambitious goal, to say the least, but the reality is Europe, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan want to keep their leading-edge technologies at home; China must develop its own, in the face of US sanctions; and, in some cases, establishing a manufacturing presence in the US just doesn’t make economic or commercial sense.
Logistically, why should Sony make image sensors in the US for cell phones that are assembled in Asia? Why should Samsung Electronics make memory chips in the US when it has the world’s greatest economies of scale in South Korea?
Samsung is building a new logic integrated circuit (IC) contract manufacturing facility in Taylor, Texas. The project is now about 50% over budget due to construction cost inflation, according to reports.
On July 7, the European Union and the government of Flanders announced a 1.5 billion euro (US$1.65 billion) investment in the Interuniversity Microelectronics Center (imec), headquartered in Belgium.
On June 28, imex and ASML announced joint plans “to intensify their collaboration in the next phase of developing a state-of-the-art high-numerical aperture (High-NA) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography pilot line at imec.”
“This groundbreaking new high-NA technology is crucial for developing high-performance energy-efficient chips, such as next-generation AI systems… Significant investments are needed to secure industry-broad access to high-NA EUV lithography beyond 2025 and retain the related advanced node process R&D capabilities in Europe,” they said.
Imec is a world-leading R&D center for the semiconductor industry. ASML, headquartered in the Netherlands, dominates the global market for semiconductor lithography equipment and has a monopoly on leading-edge EUV lithography. It assembles its lithography systems in Veldhoven in the Netherlands using components sourced in Europe, the US and Taiwan.
Fair enough, but my statement applies beyond China. Asia in general is an enormous consumer market. That’s why companies that move their manufacturing operations out of China don’t come back to the U.S., but relocate instead to other Asian countries like Malaysia or Vietnam.
Yeah but we have millions of working age people who can make TikTok videos, so who needs any manufacturing.
Biden is just part of the long line of death to America presidents. There were problems before Clinton, but he planted the seeds in China, he accelerated the demise. Then came Obama and the obamanites who accelerated the death to America agenda exponentially. Then Obama’s third term, with his shadow government continued with its legal crown ass. The ass is irrelevant, but covered for by the deep state. He’s just an incompetent, bumbling old fool... But he is their figurehead for this term of planned and willful damage in the death to America agenda.
Thus the question, will there be a fourth term of fraud and corruption?
.
Say? Can you pass me 80 million votes?
Just go Trumpian, bring our factories, technologies, and jobs home. Let them buy from us.
No, you want global economics. I want America first economics. You are at heart a state-less traitor, I am a patriot. Get it?
Why tax Americans for things they want and need?
If Americans wanted tariffs on chips, there would be tariffs.
By the way, the goat tariff is $0.68 per live goat imported into the country
Bump!
We no longer make anti-biotics here. So how do we go to a war if we can’t supply our wounded troops with anti-biotics?
That is probably correct given that China graduates several times more engineers than the US
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In school, Chinese engineers learn which Party approved rule book to use when determining what to do in a given situation. They then move on to learn how to use the cheapest possible materials to get the job done or at least to look like the job is done.
After graduation, they are hired by a Party-run company which turns out a product with the cheapest materials possible, for the most profit possible, while still being able to pay the highest brides.
This usually results in one or two examples being produced or one project being finished before the company is sold to other people who do the same job for less money, using even cheaper materials. Rinse, repeat. Everyone makes money, quantity not quality is the name of the game.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
I want BASIC, FUNCTIONING economics. Throwing “patriotic” platitudes around on a website without understanding the realities and economic forces at work in the real business world isn’t going to accomplish anything. And you look foolish when you use silly rants to dismiss anything that doesn’t fit your own myopic world view.
Americans do want tariffs, politicians and globoHOMOs don't.
Why tax Americans for things they want and need?
Why tax Americans income, the fruit of their labor, their sweat, and at the same time let products produced virtually duty free into the US market? I define that as pure evil.
“A big fat tariff will bring back ALL industry to the USA.”
A problem with any simplistic solution is the incredible complexity of the real economy. For example, the contents of a TV have crossed borders hundreds of times. Raw materials mined in Africa, Brazil or a dozen other places are shipped for initial processing to other countries. Then, depending on the material, they may go to many other countries for continued processing. The reason globalization worked is because each country would specialize in something and drive down the price of that good. If everything had to be done in one place it would require building up the infrastructure that already exists in hundreds of places.
The US is already in the process of nearshoring, friend shoring and relocating back to the US dozens of steps in the manufacturing of goods. Ironically, this is the result of trying to seize control using the Covid restrictions without, apparently, having any goals or plans in place with what to do with that control once they had it. The globalists destroyed globalization with one ill-considered policy.
The US, for a variety of reasons, is no longer capable of many things it could have done in, say, 1939. The money to build out the industrial capacity no longer exists. It was blown on the socialist equivalent of cotton candy. The population and the will to do the literally millions of jobs required to turn raw materials into pre-products simply isn’t here.
There are lots of things the country could do to make things better for Americans without hurting our trading partners. Unfortunately, we have, apparently, idiots running things. A friend’s boy was working construction in Florida. On the day DeSantis’ bill forcing contractors to hire only citizens he arrived on his construction site to the sound of silence. Of the 60 framers only three were on site. A week later the jobs were filled and he only heard English.
You want $$$$; and to tax US workers and then let imports in duty free. This makes you evil.
Your post is silly.
A tariff is a tax. Nothing more, nothing less. No true conservative is in favor of higher taxes.
1. I fully support the elimination of the income tax.
2. My support for the elimination of all payroll taxes is even stronger.
3. I am totally on board with a system of broad, uniform (by country) tariffs on all imported products and raw materials.
Is there anything else I can post here to correct whatever delusions you are dealing with this morning?
You mis define America and further, misunderstand America.
America elected a congress that weighed the various means of raising the money needed for the government. The congress determined that of all the various means, an tax on income was what would pass.
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