Summary
Trump plans to impose tariffs of up to 100% on semiconductors manufactured in Taiwan, aiming to push U.S. tech companies like Apple, Nvidia, and AMD to produce chips domestically.
The tariffs target Taiwan’s TSMC, a key supplier, despite its partial U.S. production in Arizona.
Trump criticized Biden’s CHIPS Act for funding companies like Intel and proposed tariffs as an alternative incentive.
Experts warn the move could raise prices for electronics as most TSMC chips are assembled in Asia before export to the U.S.
This is so silly.
Trump: I’m going to put a 100% tariff on your goods if you don’t start building them here.
TSMC: Yeah, we’re doing just that next year. We’re already fabbing them there in the US.
2026 rolls around and the final part of TSMZ in AZ is complete
Trump: I’m such a fucking genius.
And Republicans will eat this shit up.
This dumb motherfucker is going to make our missiles twice as expensive.
Half of his actions in the past week, especially in the past couple of days, have done things to weaken the U.S. military. It can’t all be accidental. There’s too much.
Most of his orders have boiled down to “report to the President in X weeks” the biggest one is probably the transgender ban. Which, while it sucks, isn’t going to affect enough service members to meaningfully impact the military. So there’s a lot of virtue signaling but not much movement in the EOs for the military.
The biggest actual thing has been interrupting the training cycles of the light infantry divisions with Warning Orders for a large deployment to the Southern Border. He managed to interrupt the 101st, 10th, and 82nd. Which is ridiculously bad management.
Sure, nothing has happened yet, but I think you need to look at all the cuts that are planned. Not just weapons systems and ships, although those are on the chopping block, but also commissaries and even on-base schools.
I could see him closing schools but the commissaries and exchanges are run by a private company. I doubt he’s going to after AAFES.
I’m afraid it’s already in the works. I can’t find a summary of the details really well except this Reddit thread which also links to a long document which includes that.
So if I buy a smart toaster from overseas and that toaster was built with microchips, but is then sold to the US via another country… That would avoid the tariff, no?
Doesn’t this literally do the inverse of boosting local manufacturing?
The real question you did not ask is if this toaster is smarter than Trump.Yes it is.
TSMC opened a factory in Arizona, so it’s really a big f u to the people of Taiwan while the owners of tsmc are good to go.
I get the bring jobs to the US bit, but the cost will be passed on to consumers and the whole market will shrink. There are existing chip fab facilities in the US, maybe efforts should focus on why they can’t compete instead of reducing demand for electronics inside the US.
I read somewhere that the Taiwan government doesn’t allow advanced chip technology knowledge be used in the US factory?..
Photolithography itself was invented in the US a while ago, but the company that perfect the manufacturing process that is used for modern chips is in either Belgium or Denmark iirc. That company just leases its machines to TSMC so it’s entirely possible they could just move the machines to the USA. But that’s my surface level understanding, I don’t know for sure.
Netherlands, with key components (precision lenses) made in Germany. None of this could be made in the US in reasonable time.
