Tenchu's Thoughts - Here Come the Trump Tariffs on Chips
Trump To Tariff Chips Made In Taiwan, Targeting TSMC (PCMag)
And here we go. Trump is going to put tariffs on every chip made in TSMC, all to encourage bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to America.
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“They left us and went to Taiwan,” he then said in an apparent reference to how many of the leading US tech companies have been sourcing their processors from Taiwan’s TSMC, a top semiconductor manufacturer. TSMC has established a factory in Arizona, but much of its chip production remains in Taiwan, where it’s been serving clients including Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm and AMD, among others.
“We want them to come back,” Trump said before slamming the US’s CHIPS and Science Act, which his predecessor President Biden signed to invest over $52 billion in domestic chip manufacturing.
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This makes me so mad.
Why the fukk did they "leave us and go to Taiwan," you orange dumbass?
Was it because Taiwan was supposedly tipping the scales unfairly in their favor? Are tariffs supposed to "level the playing field," as many of the MAGA cultists are arguing?
No, you idiot. It's because TSMC overtook Intel in terms of process technology, yields, and cost.
In other words, TSMC competed in the free market and won.
I say that with a somewhat heavy heart given that I still root for Intel, despite how far Intel has fallen from its semiconductor leadership position. So I think I know WTF I'm talking about.
But it shouldn't take a hardware engineer to figure this out.
So Now What?
Trump will likely impose a tariff on the order of 25% per chip from TSMC.
This means, of course, that every smartphone, every tablet, most PCs, most AI clusters, most data center, etc. will go up in price.
The exception, of course, will be those based on Intel chips made here in the USA, but given Intel's declining marketshare, along with Intel's complete lack of presence in smartphones and tablets, that's not going to be many products.
Will this tariff give Intel a competitive advantage? Probably not. The last time someone tried to compete on price using inferior technology was AMD before Lisa Su took over. And they went nearly bankrupt doing so.
More likely is that the tariff will be passed onto consumers. More inflation! Genius!
As for domestic semiconductor manufacturing, will this tariff incentivize TSMC to build more fabs here? Hard to say. Each fab costs like around $10-20B to build. That's incredibly expensive. It also takes years to build said fab, which means Trump will likely be out of office by the time the first new "tariff-incentivized" fab comes online.
Until then, expect people and businesses to pay more for consumer electronics, all thanks to our Dear Orange Leader.
TUCK FRUMP ... over and over again.
Tenchusatsu
P.S. - Let's not forget that Intel, being our primary domestic semiconductor manufacturer, just sacked their CEO, and they still haven't found a permanent replacement. Intel is a sinking ship, but nothing Trump does is going to fix their fundamental problems. |
