And it would be a tactical blunder to give the US any access to their current generation of chips. Even more so while Trump is in office. Taiwan should look into ending relationships with the US and getting closer to the EU, South/Central America, and Africa.
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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I dont think you can explain to an importing country that tried to start a tariff war
Wasn't logistics the US's superpower? I'd expect someone to explain their chief that factories aren't monolitic objects that can be picked up and delivered to a new location and go right into production?
He still can't grasp what a tariff even is, after a decade of repeated explanations. Trying to explain to him global supply chain logistics is not a realistic goal.
Don't move any of it there. Move some to Japan though.
Why even say 'we cannot move production to the USA'?
Why not just say 'Are you actual crazy? Fuck right off, don't bother me'
Guess we'll just fall behind
Why does it seem tRump's answer for everything is, "Let's just steal it"?
The US invading Taiwan would be a hell of a reverse uno on the Chinese.
Oh my god.
That really would be the cherry on top of this goddamned clownworld timeline.
Xi: (surprised Pikachu face)
To be fair, this all started under the Biden administration with the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.
The US is increasingly concerned that, if China invades Taiwan, it will completely lock them out from semiconductor manufacturing and crater the US economy. Rather than flex their soft power and exercise a little diplomacy like the US used to do in decades past, they've apparently decided that the invasion of Taiwan is inevitable and the only course of action is to bolster semiconductor manufacturing at home.
Trump, of course, has all the subtlety of a torpedo and his rhetoric here has been needlessly antagonistic... but yeah, this whole thing started under Biden and now Trump is pretending it was always his idea. So really the thing he stole was the policy.
While the CHIPS act was started under Biden, it was completely different from what is being done now. It was about developing a domestic source of semiconductors as a hedge against Taiwan being invaded and was done cooperatively with the Taiwanese with mutual benefits. The Taiwanese still owned the manufacturing here, so they would still benefit if the Chinese came invaded. Biden was doing what was smart to do and also had benefits for other countries, including EU allies, since everyone knows those plants in Taiwan are rigged to blow at the first hint of invasion..
Trump has removed the benefits and added tariffs and threats. He didn't steal the policy. He inherited it and then changed it to be something evil.
CHIPS was a response to the pandemic supply chain crunch. It was finding for local businesses to get up to speed so we weren't dependent on a single supplier on the other side of the planet. PEDOnald revoke the majority of that finding, and decided threatening taxes on US citizens to force that single supplier to also produce things here was somehow a better solution...
Rapist mind.
Everyone seems to have thought that is was a great idea to let pretty much every core manufacturing competency die in the US over the last 30 years or so. How's that working out for us now?
The blame is at least as old as Reagan, really accelerated with Clinton (NAFTA, China entering the WTO) and only got worse from there.
As much as I hate to admit it, tariffs are the answer. I also think that it's important to understand that Trump's tariffs exist only for extortion and bribes that benefit him personally. Tariffs can be used to encourage domestic production of goods and services that are clearly not something that we want to depend on other countries for merely for the sake of enriching the same circle of already rich assholes in perpetuity. Rich assholes would just have to keep resorting to pumping up immigration to suppress wages for these domestic goods, like they have always done for hundreds of years at this point.
Tariffs are not the answer, they are part of a reasonable answer. By themselves they're not going to being back the tech manufacturing industry. You also need incentives on multiple levels, government funding into relevant education, etc.
You also need time. All the money in the world won't cause a world-class industry to spring up overnight; you need sustained investment over years, if not decades.
Except we can't just insource production of cutting edge computer chips. We literally don't have enough people to build smart phones. Those require a global supply chain to be remotely affordable. Having a global economy gives us access to technology we would simply have to go without if we try to do everything ourselves.
We've already been providing direct subsidies and tax subsidies for all of these companies for decades. Nothing comes from it and as a member of the tax bracket that actually pays taxes I am not willing to keep doing it. If we need to nationalize truly mission critical companies I would rather just do that instead of continuing to privatize profits and socialize costs.
Those investments should definitely come with strings attached. But there's a lot you need to invest into.
- Fabs cost a shitload of money and are slow to build. If you want to be able to be independent from Taiwan in ten years you should invest a couple dozen billion bucks in fabs right now. If you want a company to invest that money for you, you need to guarantee that they'll see a good ROI, which means you probably sign a contract to buy tons of hardware that won't be made for another decade.
- Fabs need a lot of land. If you want to start building ASAP you need to expedite assessments and acquire land quickly (and though eminent domain, if necessary). That ain't cheap.
- If you want a qualified workforce available you need to not only invest in making training available but also in making it appealing enough that they'll start training before the jobs are even there. Advertisement like that costs money, as do stipends.
- In fact, add research grants to the pool because you'll want both basic research to be done in the field and skilled researchers to be available for cross-hiring by your companies.
You'll need to keep (some amount of) the money flowing at least until the industry can be independently competitive on the world stage. Mishandling your burgeoning industry can mean that all that investment money and a large number of jobs suddenly go up in smoke.
Note: All of this assumes that you'll buy your manufacturing equipment from established, potentially foreign companies like ASML and Zeiss. If you want to make that stuff domestically as well you can probably add another hundred billion bucks and a decade or two of very dedicated catch-up to the bill.
Even Tim Cook mentionned it, the US doesn't have the amount of engineers it needs to move production to the US, it's simply impossible.
Well foreign engineers could come here, I'm sure they would feel very safe and welcome...
the US doesn’t have the amount of engineers it needs to move production to the US
Tim Cook can eat a bag of rancid donkey dicks. The reason we 'don't have enough engineers', a point which I would emphatically argue, is because CEOs like Tim and companies like Apple vehemently refused to invest in domestic capabilities as they rushed to save money via Chinese outsourcing.
If we want "Tooling" Engineers, or any other specialty such as "Process Control", the answer is as always to pay them what they are worth and that's the rub; Timmie and his buddies don't want to pay the high salaries for these skills.
...it’s simply impossible.
It's no more impossible than having enough world class software engineers. The United States in general, and Silicon Valley in particular, used to be the world leader in developing and attracting Engineering talent and the only reason we aren't anymore is because companies don't want to pay for it.