Taiwan refuses to move half of U.S.-bound chip production to American shores — trade discussion to be focused on Section 232 investigation for preferential deal on semiconductors

Good. It was a naked attempt at a shakedown, and also 100% a bluff. TSMC honestly should cancel/rescind all the fab construction they’re starting to spin up in the US, honestly. Now is emphatically not the time to undermine their strategic defense policy, which largely revolves around “if the CCP invades, we will melt our chip fabs to slag”.

The idea behind that fab was so US can continue to build weapons if Taiwan was under attack, this why it wasn't the latest technology. The weapons would still be important to defend it, but yeah this admin is signalling Taiwan won't get help and is asking for 50% so it won't suffer consequences of not helping them.
They also seem very dumb if they think they could spin 50% just like that even if Taiwan was completely on board with this.
- seems very dumb
  Kinda the MO of this regime, if we’re being honest
Good. It was a naked attempt at a shakedown, and also 100% a bluff.
It takes more than a few years to spin up a chip fab, with an outlay on the order of hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars. Even if they'd been eager to take the US up on the deal (and why would they want to relinquish a functional monopoly on cutting end processors?), there's no way they'd be dealing with the same administration by the time it was completed. Even if Trump was still in office, the fucker changes his mind every five minutes. Not conducive to long-term economic projects like this.
Now is emphatically not the time to undermine their strategic defense policy, which largely revolves around “if the CCP invades, we will melt our chip fabs to slag”.
TSMC won't have their edge forever. China's fabs are catching up quickly, with 5nm chips in production and 3nm chips possible in a few more years. This was a good strategy when China needed to import these chips and Taiwan had the market cornered. But if TSMC's rigged-to-explode labs go up in smoke after China's a major player in the market, that actually benefits Beijing.
Strapping yourself with Semtex might be a savvy play in a single moment, but it's not going to work long term.
That's before you consider the real threat Taiwan poses to China is as a launchpad for US strikes into the interior.
- China has the engineering talent and numbers to catch up for certain, but SMIC is not producing advanced chips in volumes, even as designs for next gens of chips and SMIC technology come out fast.
  The big factor in all of this is that the market for chips in China is 5x+ that of US, and the business interests of anyone in the sector outside of China would be to choose China over US if they only had to pick one. US IP is going to expire soon enough, but is already abused for colonial power over global chip sector.
  China is definitely at a mature point where home grown chips can already compete in phones/laptops (Huawei) and AI due to their energy infrastructure. They don't need to invade Taiwan to have useful electronics, and the home grown industry will accelerate faster than West's. While TSMC's margin of leadership will narrow, they will still be ahead for more than 5 years.
- Oh I know - but I’m saying they should halt efforts now, because they’ve been going on for several years (I think close to 4-5?) at this point.
  I was also under the impression that Mainland was still meaningfully behind the cutting edge, that TSMC was absolutely not resting on their laurels, and that the prospect of the CCP fabs fully catching up isn’t super likely. Out of curiosity, do you have any references/articles about recent ~~CSMC~~SMIC/etc lithography advancements?
This, moving chip production is basically telling China to invade
- plus its likely not go to built domestically anyways, all the logistic and costs, plus hiring more expensive domestic employees.

"Give up your only bargaining chip otherwise we'll hurt you!"

Hmm wonder where I've seen this before...

ahem Russia-Ukraine ahem

Bargaining chip. Hehe, I see what you did there.
- Lol, pun wasn't intended, but this is such a lovely coincidence

And why would anyone expect Taiwan to give on this? They don’t benefit at all.

Art of the deal my ass.

Art of the ass. Deal?
- Deal.
Trump doesn't know how to strike a deal, he just bullies people into accepting his terms.
- Yeah, that only worked on small contractors when he was building his casinos because they didn’t have the infinite Russian money for lawyers.
  Turns out that doesn’t work so well on sovereign nations and international corporations.

Who the heck would to move jobs to such an openly racist, bigoted and xenophobic country.

More to the point what business would want to spend ungodly amounts of money building a manufacturing plant in a fascist dictatorship that would just then steal the plant from you? Yeah, I think they'll be fine keeping their assets out of trump's tiny little rat hands.

It probably would have been on the table if Kamala had won.

I mean, the democrats just had to have a primary, put in a populist and watch Trump get buried.

Instead we have this.

I mean, let's not get crazy now.
Why would the Taiwan government give up half of its leverage for US defense and investment if Kamala was president?
- Because the Trump administration has proven itself to be dishonest and willing to go back on past agreements.
  I’m not sure you’re aware the reputation America has given itself.
- They'd be more likely to not that they definitely would. They are definitely not going to under Trump
Amen to that brother. It was simple and we screwed it.

Gee, I wonder why other countries would not want to move production to the US after ICE arrested the Koreans who were doing exactly that?

No way to know, I guess.

Especially when the only thing keeping you protected from invasion is that only your country has those production facilities.
- It's quite interesting that no other country has managed to build a chip foundry that would even remotely rival TSMC.
  Especially considering they use third-party lithography machines.
- And probably it is also the only thing that China wants so that can try to corner the market. But if they move half of the production oversea then they probably will become less appetible for China since they cannot really control the production.
  Not that they must do it, just a consideration.

What? Taiwan doesn't want to give up its only strategic advantage? I'm shocked.

/uj

I'm curious how long it would take to build the supply chains and fabs to make the 50% things a reality.

No surprise, when this admin is sending signals that it won't help. Doing what they are asking would allow US to give Taiwan to China without much consequences to US.

Honestly, the best option for everyone involved except warhawks would be to literally fund the Taiwanese to relocate to the US.

Or and hear me out on this, americans can learn to stop using semiconductors. Maybe go to abacus and toes.
- abacus might be to complex for the inbred R voters.
I'm sorry, but who is "everyone involved"?
Taiwan Population 23 396 049. To give some example NYC population 8 478 072. So you need to build 3 NYC to move Taiwan. You might as well build a big spaceship that can pick island and move it next to Hawaii.

feels almost like someone asked to give up their nukes. Okay maybe that was a bit exaggerated...

giving up thier sole resource, more like giving thier OIL reserves up.

Isn't it already failing anyway? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC_Arizona

Edit: arguable, I have no expertise in fab building so hard for me to say if the deviations from the initial plan have meaningful impact. Also my understanding is that it's as much an economical partnership as a political one, namely intertwining Taiwan with the US. It's kind of weakening the "silicon shield" but also create interdependence.