Semiconductor shares slump – possibly thanks to Biden and Trump The share price of several major semiconductor producers has taken a sharp dive, seemingly in response to a pair of political developments in the United States. On Wednesday TSMC shares dipped 7.98 percent on the New York Stock Exchange, while ASML dropped 10.93 percent, Tokyo Electron was off by 9.25 percent, Nvidia dropped 6 …
Of course not, but that is not why there are US carrier fleets nearby. Those fleets are nearby to ensure that Taiwan is not absorbed in to China, which could then cut off supply to The West globally, which would be a major catastrophe for IT in general and all those fancy gadgets DARPA likes to get its hands on like, oh, hypermissiles at a guess. Or all those fancy self-piloted "assistants" that are supposed to be delivered with every new F-35 at some point in the future.
Trump appears hell-bent on not spending a dime on anything. He's missing the fact that, if the USA has the economic and international situation it enjoys today, it is because it is present on the seven seas and the five continents and ready to be aggressive if need be, with the best tools there are. Bring all that military back home and your influence is going to shatter to pieces, leaving someone else to pick up the slack (that someone being Beijing at this point in time).
You really have to be a moron to not see that.
Trump is trying to extort Taiwan because he sees the presidency as being a godfather of mafia. What he's selling here is the fantasy to his voters that foreigners will pay the US for its protection.
It won't work, obviously[1] - any more than Mexico paid for those few miles of glorified garden fence - but that's okay. For one thing, that failure won't be clear until after he's elected, so who cares anyway. And secondly, he is cannily not actually saying to his supporters that "these rich foreigners will pay more taxes so you won't have to", he's just suggesting it, with plenty of deniability. He's selling a dream of raw greed. He's good at that, he's been doing it for 40 years.
[1] and any thinking American wouldn't want it to work. Having foreigners finding your navy, of all things, is not a happy place to be, strategically.
Trump is trying to extort Taiwan because he sees the presidency as being a godfather of mafia. What he's selling here is the fantasy to his voters that foreigners will pay the US for its protection.
That's following on from his statements where he reduced the world's most successful defensive military alliance to a mafia protection racket, saying he let Russia do anything to NATO member countries if they didn't cough up the 2%.
Not a new sentiment - Harry Truman used to refer to Chaing Kai Shek as "Cash my cheque". But that was back when Taiwan had China's seat in the UN Security Council and it wasn't clear Mao Ze Dong's regime would last.
Now, if all the Harvard MBAs and McKinsey consultant's hadn't recommended the offshoring of chip manufacture, the world would be different. But then they wouldn't have been able to charge those juicy fees. It really grinds my gears when bean counters sacrifice supply chain security for cheapness then whinge that their supply chains aren't secure.
You have to take that into account with everything he says. That's not hyperbole, many of the people who served in his cabinet said as much. He was a poor student who likely wouldn't have even made it to college if it hadn't been for daddy's lavish donations - the fact he forced his former schools into NDAs barring release of his information back in 2015 tells you all you need to know.
He views the world through a lens where everything is transactional. If Taiwan needs our protection he thinks they should pay for it, because even if he was capable of understanding that Taiwan's independence might be in the US national interest he doesn't care about US national interest. Only self interest. Not only would he seek to make them pay, he would act like the NYC slumlord he started out as and do as little as possible for the payment. If they end up getting invaded he'd claim they were one day late with a payment or they had violated some unwritten term of the agreement and weasel out of the deal anyway. He stiffs all the contractors he works with because he knows they have little recourse other than years of court battles. You think he wouldn't stiff Taiwan?
You really should do your homework before making a comment like that. Intel 3nm is in production now. ARM is already working with Intel running engineering lots on 1.8nm (28A) which will be in production next year. TSMC will continue to lead in market share, but Intel will become a credible second source in 2025 with 18A. BTW, go read TSMCs earnings report from this past week -- TSMC is at capacity for 2025 so everyone will be on allocation. It's not fun having your supplier limit your revenue. Gelsinger is succeeding in making Intel a strong alternate source for HPC product.. That's why Intel stock is up. Creating a foundry business that's architecture agnostic while maintaining his x86 business is a remarkable pivot for Intel, and not a moment too soon, as well.
The US will treat Taiwan as it did Afghanistan once they have the FABs up and running on US soil. More of an issue is the US-planned tribalisation of tech, hardware (Huawei), software (Kaspersky, TikTok), firmware (Android bans) and IP. We might gripe about GAFA but the tech industry and the global internet have underpinned the global economy and most growth, directly and indirectly, since the 80s. Take it away with sanctions, tariffs and tribalisation, the supply chains will collapse (including food) and the global economy will tank big time. Huge inflation and artificial hikes to interest rates - much more than recently. Lots of poverty leading to political instability as unhappy people blame and take down sitting regimes. Brexit got the Tories elected, but the inevitable consequences of Brexit, the UK being about a third poorer, buried them. Now extrapolate that globally, when the USG breaks the entire economy with Brexit-like policies.
Make as much cash as you can, as quickly as you can, to protect yourself, and don't have any/more kids. The future is going to be a horror show.
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