Uncle Sam doesn't want Samsung, SK Hynix making memories in China

The US government already has a lot to say about what products chipmakers can and can't sell in China. This week the Commerce Department moved to make it harder for South Korean memory vendors Samsung and SK Hynix to continue manufacturing in the region. In a notice [PDF] published in the Federal Register, the Commerce …

[Doctor Syntax]

"What tribute Samsung or SK Hynix will have to make in order to convince the Trump administration to grant these licenses remains to be seen."

Announce that the US will bear the brunt of any shortfalls in production. Trump should be happy with that. It will help his balance of payments.

[VoiceOfTruth]

While we're about it, let's get the terminology right: it's the American regime.

America is going down the toilet. It wants to drag its 'allies' down with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The America Regime aka CCP. Corrupt crony party.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which America? North? South?

[Like a badger]

At the moment the Deep South. Almost like the Confederacy won the civil war, isn't it?

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Chile-Argentina-South, once Trump made his way through to Panama.

[Roland6]

Step 1: stop all shipments to the US.

In the case of Samsung, that would be all products…

If the US wants their products then US businesses can bear the brunt of Trumps tariffs.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

"OK, then we stop delivery to US".

Hynix and Samsung both make a shrug emoji. It a simple market thing: Winning margin too small, OK, then not. As far as Micron, as an alternative supplier, is concerned: Should work, but not for free.

Maybe, MAYBE it should really happen this way, making RAM in the USA so expensive that even Microsoft is forced to optimize the code for less RAM usage, Google making the browser less RAM hungry and more efficient and so on...

[Tron]

Re: "OK, then we stop delivery to US".

Yeah, stick with the RotW market and stop selling to the US. I'm sure W11 could run on 1Gb RAM with a bit of tweaking.

Time for liberation day, with the RotW declaring independence from the USA.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: "OK, then we stop delivery to US".

Server 2025, normal install (not core), fresh after boot, no service optimization, below 2 GB. Calms down to below 1.5 GB after a minute, hovering at a bit above 1 GB. Optimized, i.e. a few services deactivated and Defender feature removed, about 1.1 GB fresh started, calms down to less than 900 MB.

Server 2019, core, fresh after boot a bit above 1 GB, calms down to below 700 MB after a few minutes. No other optimization, Defender still running. But if you run windows updates you need 500 MB extra at least. With defender removed fresh boot 800 MB, calms down to less than 550 MB (taskmanager says 514 MB, with 13 MB being task manager himself).

But you want to run a browser, don't you? And you may be forced to use MS-Office. And Teams. And Webex. And Edge-Browser. Zoom. And ShCirtix. Libreoffice too for the shortcomings of MS-Office.

[R Soul]

Re: "OK, then we stop delivery to US".

"I'm sure W11 could run on 1Gb RAM with a bit of tweaking."

Which is an exercise as pointless as converting the space shuttle to run on coal.

[CuberHubs]

Re: "OK, then we stop delivery to US".

The one thing US software companies will not do is make their products better to serve the customer’s needs.

[Pascal Monett]

Astounding

Look, I am not ignorant of the past. I am grateful for all the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and drove back the Nazi fascists. Unfortunately, men of Eisenhower's caliber have apparently died out.

But hey, the USA has no right to dictate what companies in other sovereign states decide to do. This nonsense has to stop. The CIA is not entitled to rig elections in foreign countries (with the disastrous results that followed). The White House is not entitled to dictate what foreign companies decide to do.

The consequence is easily predictable. The USA is, currently, 340 million people. The world population is estimated at 8 billion.

Guess what matters most ?

The White House has less and less weight to throw around. The time of reckoning is approaching.

[Like a badger]

Re: Astounding

There can be no doubt. I'm as white and Old World as they come, but anyone can see that not just China, but most Asian economies are faster growing and collectively have a population many times that of the US (or "the West"). They have a better work ethic, less of the dead weight of welfare states, less of the entitlement, very little of Europe's automatic opposition to progress, and they're better at innovating. Whilst many of those qualities will get diluted as living standards rise, there's a good fifty years of Central South and South East Asia outpacing the West, even allowing population decline in China and Japan. The US and European economies are unfortunately sickly inward looking ex-growth affairs; Europe is obsessed with its own problems without knowing how to solve them, the US is a madhouse run by a toddler who's throwing his weight around, yet the US' future prospects look as meagre as Europe's.

The Korean companies are certainly not yet ready to throw their lot in with Asian regional interests over kow-towing to Trump, but as you say it's only a matter of time. We're pretty much at the point where for many Asian countries their trade with China is the same value as with the US (and their regional international trade in Asia generally exceeds that with the US), obviously some of that then gets re-exported to the US, eg S.Korean export of components to China for eventual re-export as finished goods, but even so...

Could be five, ten, even forty years hence, but it will come as an existential shock to America and global markets when one day an occupant of the White House tries to order another country around, and they say "get lost, if we have to choose between trade with you, or trade with who we please, then it won't be you". Trump's disrespectful baiting and tariff threats against China could hasten the day - Trump is very lucky that Xi is a far more intelligent and patient man than he.

[LBJsPNS]

Re: Astounding

"less of the dead weight of welfare states"

Your asshole seems to be showing.

[Alumoi]

Re: Astounding

Guess what matters most ?

The ammount of firepower and the willingness to use it without actually declaring war. And no, the war on terror is not war.

Just like the soviets, the US will stay in the 'policed' zone until the resources are depleted.

[Like a badger]

Re: Astounding

@ Pascal M: Have you noticed a fair few downvotes suddenly appearing (sans reply) for any post that criticises Trump or Trumpistan? And that's even if the original post is at some unfashionable hour when there's few other commentards about. Seems to me the Reg are letting the bots in.

[martinusher]

Re: Astounding

I put it down to bots -- human or automatic. "Pay it no mind...."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Astounding

The downvotes will be from the orange manbaby himself. He's got to do something while an army of ICE goons attend to his hair and make-up.

[mark l 2]

Re: Astounding

This will confuse their MAGA brains.

I love Trump! Down vote this if you love Trump too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Astounding

For the "west", the allies rely upon the US in many areas, especially intelligence (information) and defence. The US up until now, has been reasonably benign.

This is off topic, but the link below shows how the right wing in the US and the current administration have "influence" (control ?) over their own businesses :

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/30/cracker-barrel-backlash

The "enemies" of the US will not play ball with the US, so my envisaged outcome is that the US will exert more influence on its allies.

The current policies of the US in regards to the economy (tariffs, behaviour, budget) are going to cause a decline in the US economy, and to compensate, the US will turn on its partners/allies. Quite simply because the countries who are already resisting the US won't bend to their will.

The US admin needs someone to blame for the decline, as has already been shown, they ignore their own statistics (stated as fake) and sacked the relevant people.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Astounding

> The USA is, currently, 340 million people. The world population is estimated at 8 billion.

10% of people hold 50% of the wealth, right? What is it that matters most?

I'm taking a trip through Africa now, and there are cities . . . . but mostly it's people living in the dirt. There are condos, where people have a couch, a TV, a phone, a stove, and next to nothing else. A few decorative trinkets. I bought one person a phone so she could use the internet and learn - khan academy - because how else will she be able to pull herself out of the dirt if she doesn't even have access to knowledge or information? When there's not even a library in the area? What I paid was small-ish to me, but for her it was 60 days income - if she didn't pay rent, or food, or medicine for daughter, or transportation, or clothes, or electricity, or water, or laundry, or .....

Truly. So many people have so very little. The complaint is the same. "There are no other jobs," so she makes USD $2.20 per day. What's the GDP of Africa, divided by the population of Africa?

> The current population of Africa is 1,553,992,052 as of Monday, August 18, 2025

> data.worldbank.org indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=A9 -- the GDP of Africa is $2 789 600 992 000

Average yearly income in Africa is $1795 per person. Take out South Africa, Algeria, and Egypt, and you take a solid trillion USD off the numbers. Comparatively, the GDP of the US is 4.x trillion dollars. In the question, "The US, or the rest of the world?" --- the answer isn't so easy, when the thing you want is money.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Astounding

> > The USA is, currently, 340 million people. The world population is estimated at 8 billion.

> 10% of people hold 50% of the wealth, right? What is it that matters most?

Classical AC failure... Basic math anyone? Because this bloke didn't learn it, whereas everyone else in the class did.

340/8000 = 0,0425 = less than 5%. And they do NOT hold 50% of the wealth of the world, far from it. Maybe 50% of the debt of the world, but not 50% wealth, especially when checking the GDD vs GDP per captia (Gross Domestic Dept vs. you know what GDP means...). And checking how much a $US is worth inside US (buy groceries) vs. how much a € is worth within EU (check groceries prices again), how much other currencies are worth is is even worse. Eggs cost three to four times as much in US vs Germany, same for a lot of other stuff... Some things are cheaper, but overall the cost of living is somewhere between factor three and four, and Trump keeps on aiming for higher factors for the normal US people. Which are those who suffer most from his nonsense.

[katrinab]

NVidia is an American company, so the Fanta Führer gets to say what they do. Likewise with Micron.

Samsung and SK Hynix are not, and last time I looked, South Korea was not an American colony.

[Like a badger]

"Samsung and SK Hynix are not, and last time I looked, South Korea was not an American colony."

Economically and politically I beg to differ. After Britain gave up running an empire, the US stepped easily into the role of the global imperial power, getting its way by military force, by forceful diplomacy, by trade, and by virtue of having the world's reserve currency. S.Korea relies heavily on the US for military deterrence against the Norks, is an export-dependent economy (thus reliant upon the dollar) with the US one of its two largest trading partners. Much of the IP used by Korean business in technology is intertwined with US tech IP, giving the US even more influence. SK is also somewhat isolated as a democracy in the region, which makes it lean politically towards the US, and given recent significant instabilities in SK government, the won't be in any rush to piss off the Yanks.

So I conclude that South Korea, like a good chunk of the world is a US colony. The UK and Europe are in the same situation that I've described above with a few nuances; I think British readers will reluctantly acknowledge the situation, I'm not so sure European readers will, but it is still so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind you, a colony has some rights granted. Which the chunk of the world you are reffering to doesn't.

[martinusher]

Actually, SK was a dictatorship until relatively recently and it is not much of a democracy even today. Its also home to one of the largest US military facilities in Asia. This line is that the US is protecting SK from NK but its likely that its only in the sense that we 'protected' South Vietnam from North Vietnam until the Vietnamese decided otherwise.

What's protecting SK from NK is China. Although we're working overtime on reviving the Big, Bad, Red Menace, in real life China's got a vested interest in peace and prosperity so won't take kindly to people rocking the boat. So if the DPRK wants to to play "Stalinist Paradise in Asia" then that's their business but if they actively start causing trouble then they'll have to deal with China.

The real troublemaker in the region is the US because we''re acting like an Empire but we're also broke (Empires are at their most dangerous when they start declining). Our latest game is to encourage Japanese militarism "to counter China". Its not getting too much traction (yet) which is just as well because we all know how the last attempt to impose a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" turned out.

[LBJsPNS]

You really think one of the largest economies in the world is broke? Stop watching right wing propaganda, it's making you stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

With a debt to GDP ratio of over 100% I'd say so.

[ecofeco]

I can hear them now

"LOL wut?!"

[Roland6]

Repatriating manufacturing;g?

Stepping back from:the specifics it does seem Trump et al want America to be the producer of everything (yes everything including food -remember GM crops qualify as WMDs) with the rest of the world supplicants to its largesse…

[LBJsPNS]

Re: Repatriating manufacturing;g?

"remember GM crops qualify as WMDs"

In what reality is that the case?

[Roland6]

Re: Repatriating manufacturing;g?

This was the terminator seed that the US corps wanted to foist on the rest of the world. Ie. You could only grow one crop, and for the next year buy new seed from Monsanto et al.

Even with “normal” GM crops, the licensing does not permit farmers to collect seed and replant from that for the following year. Hence effectively Monsanto aka US has control of a nations food supply which makes it a WMD.

[LBJsPNS]

Re: Repatriating manufacturing;g?

"Hence effectively Monsanto aka US has control of a nations food supply which makes it a WMD."

You do realize Monsanto was bought by Bayer in 2018, do you not? Last time I looked Bayer was a German company. Please try getting some facts into your argument before you start with the hyperbole.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not keen

I'm not keen on the Chinese, but Fuck off Trump and your criminal cronies.

[collinsl]

Re: Not keen

Whereas I like Chinese*

* For sketch reference purposes only. Not an actual endorsement of the CCP or their horrible regime.