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 dumb motherfucker is going to make our missiles twice as expensive.
To be fair, this was Bidens idea, and the plants are already being finished in the US. Trump just wants to take credit for it.
Biden was not going to tariff Taiwan. His idea was to incentivize Taiwanese chip manufacturing to create an American manufacturing capability. That capability is not fully online and won’t be for years. This is a different policy.
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.
Good think I didn’t throw out all those discrete transistors, we’re in for a loooot of soldering
Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and all other fabless chip designers must be thrilled.
Taiwan must be thrilled too. That silicon shield may crack earlier than expected.
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?..
I mean, it is their one real bargaining chip to make sure the US keeps standing between them and China. They are teaching us some of it though, and we’ve been building fabs to make them here in the US for years. Biden got that ball rolling.
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.
The breadth of products and industries this will touch is going to be massive. Even if you’re not buying electronics from a company, those companies still have to buy and replace their own electronics to operate which, if those prices go up, it raises operating costs. Your cheeseburger can get a bit pricier because of this.
keep yer microchips out of my cheeseburgers!
Everything has a microcontroller anymore.
Chips can’t even be fully produced here. You can make the chip here, but the packaging and some other things need to happen in Taiwan still. Until they get that goin the fab in the US is almost useless.
Not to mention all the really cool machines that make the chips are made in Europe
It’s almost like we are in a global economy!
WHY CAN’T EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD JUST BE MADE IN AMERICA!???!
DON’T THEY KNOW THAT’S WHAT JESUS WANTS??!
Globalist!! /s
Yeah, we’ll be able to build usable chip factories here in the states in no time. That surely doesn’t take several years to get set up.
And they have to buy the machines for this in Europe, anyway.
Especially when the dumbass halted the CHIPS program which was intended to do precisely that thing.
Tim Apple; that’s your cue to send the next million for “inauguration”…
Fortunately chips aren’t in many products so this should really help the cost of living. Great work!
/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.
Why do you think he decided to do it?
what a fucking idiot.
wants ‘made in usa’ chips.
usa literally can’t make them… only certain parts of them… and not near enough to ‘go around’ and meet even just the domestic demand. not now, not in a decade. not in two decades. it ain’t happening.
criticizes efforts to get more of them made here. reasoning being, of course, equal parts of: something biden did that’s seen as good and he dont like that, and money being spent that could be funneled to him and his comrades and donors instead).
instead wants to put a 100% tax on imports as ‘punishment’. which could be the trigger that puts the economy into a tailspin that hasn’t been seen in nearly 100 years. semiconductors are that important, taiwan makes that many of them, and the usa does not.
you know damn well those tariff funds would never go towards improving american production capabilities… it would just fund more tax cuts for his wealthy donors.
Isn’t there a TSMC plant in Arizona and the chips act also bolstered Intel as well?
Just when you thought he couldn’t get any dumber. Advanced microchips are one of the highest in demand commodities in the world. TSMC will have no problem selling them to the rest of the world outside of the U.S.
Actually, they already signed up to teach us how to make them, and their plants in the US are already being built. This was Biden idea, Trump is just taking credit for it.
Yet another tariff that is somehow magically against an American ally and not against Russia or China.
The US allies also need to get their hands on the pee tape or whatever the US enemies have in their hands…
Is there really anything anyone could use to blackmail trump? There could be a video of him eating a baby alive and a third of the country would still support him, and another third of the country wouldn’t even notice.
Is there really anything anyone could use to blackmail trump?
No. The “pee pee tape” joke has been obsolete for a long time now.
It’s sad but any sort of gay sex would tear his base, so there’s still that.
Insert joke about gay sex tearing one’s base
So considering his infatuation with trans people, you think the tape is with him and a preop trans woman?
No, all that would do is make them start going on about how “the left” is attacking queer folk now. Meanwhile they would still persecute queer people, because they would still fervently believe every other gay person in the world except for Trump was a pedophile who was grooming kids.
The guy doesn’t realize that all these companies are funding our EUV technology. If one falls so do the others. Our meaning our part. The whole EUV thing is a total ecosystem that is globally connected. The thing barely works at all according to science and people are working day and night to make it work more reliably. On top of thar, now they have to put up with less profit.
But sure! Chips!
Chip chip chip! C’mon! Chip chip chip!
Hooray! I was getting worried about gaming GPUs becoming affordable again now that they’re winding down the “chip shortage” excuse!
Good thing we can count on Trump to price us out of the few pleasures in life we cling to in order to tolerate the world he’s ruining! 😮💨🤬
It’s pretty funny how this is an attack that could backfire extremely.
Almost all of the advanced chips are made using ASML EUV machines. Which is a Dutch company.
If Trump continues on this path of self-destruction, attacking countries and companies around the world, the US might just end up with sub-par chip production like China has. (They have old ASML machines and aren’t getting any new ones). TSMC is one of the biggest partners of ASML and has a LOT of cards to play to get ASML to not supply any machines to the US.
It’s absolutely horrid that a boy like Trump has any power and doesn’t even know that his attacks are nothing more than a punch to his own balls. A normal politician would work on alliances to get chip production going in the US before fucking over all the companies relying on chips. Stuff like subsidies for local chip production are not news worthy enough for him to get any kick out of so he just flexes his power.
It’s an “attack” that Biden had the idea for first. We’ve been working on it for a couple years now already, and the plants are already being built in the US. Nobody thinks of it as an attack.
But.
It’s not working out, because the Taiwanese teaching us how to do it think we’re all lazy, and the Americans learning think the Taiwanese are slave drivers.
It’s not working out, because the Taiwanese teaching us how to do it think we’re all lazy, and the Americans learning think the Taiwanese are slave drivers.
I’m choosing to believe this partly because on my own preconceived notions, but mostly because it’s funny.
Biden did not “attack” TSMC, he developed a plan to bring chip Manufacturing to the US. Orange man’s attack, an actual economic attack, has no actual plan. These attacks will send industries into free fall and he’ll pull the trigger flippantly, right now (the moment when he thinks he has just an idea of his own), long before the market will be able to correct and without taking any steps to mitigate a disaster. Maybe reactive half measures later, but disaster will happen all the same.
I know Biden didn’t attack TSMC, hence the quotation marks around the word.
I got the sense that was what you meant from the rest of your post, although I take it others did not get it based on down votes.
This is really dumb for a number of reasons. But first and foremost, we have a strong alliance with Taiwan, we should be trying to maintain that connection and not let our relationship become hostile. We have military bases in Taiwan, this is part of how we keep a close eye on China. If nothing else, Taiwan is strategically important to us.
In other words, don’t fuck up years of successful diplomacy to make a quick buck like a nearsighted moron.
Taiwan is only strategically important to the us because it manufactures those chips. Trump’s goal is to increase production in the us, so we aren’t forced to intervene when mainland China comes for them.
like a nearsighted moron
Uh, thing is, that’s 99.999999% of republicans right there.
Thing is, his real goal is to fuck up that alliance.
Trump has been compromised by the Russians ever since they bailed him out in the 90s. He is actively dismantling American global power, just in a way that is wrapped in a US flag so that the voters don’t realize it.
Feds woulda JFK’d him by now if this were true.
You assume there’s a “real power” that exists to stop him.
The president is not some underdog fighting the power. “Deep state” isn’t a shadowy cabal of people who secretly run the country, it’s the career office workers who have experience working in their departments and make tiny decisions in the implementation of authority delegated to regulatory agencies.
They’re not in smoke filled rooms they’re in beige conference rooms on cspan looking at PowerPoints.
We have military bases in Taiwan
The US does not have military bases in Taiwan anymore - not since the US switched diplomatic recognition from the ROC to the PRC in 1979 - one of the concessions to the PRC was the removal of US military presence from Taiwan.
