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Taiwan chipmakers hint at decoupling from the US

Nova is the "secret sauce" of tsmc's process lead. That they chosen tsmc and Samsung is curious.
 
That's an interesting news: Taiwan chipmakers hint at decoupling from the US
Apparently, they prefer to work with China since there is more money to be made over there than in US.

This is part of the "Silicon Shield" initiative we have talked about for years. If you don't think this was all part of the plan when Morris Chang went back to Taiwan to start the foundry business you don't know Morris. He is a master strategist as well as a technologist. A very dangerous combination. Pat Gelsinger should be studying Morris instead of pissing him off.

You can call this a US Decoupling to get clicks but clearly it is a tighter coupling with the world move, absolutely.
 
That's an interesting news: Taiwan chipmakers hint at decoupling from the US
Apparently, they prefer to work with China since there is more money to be made over there than in US.
In that Asia Time article, author David P. Goldman called Taiwan's policy to encourage domestic capabilities in providing semiconductor tools and materials as "decoupling" from US.

I think he dreamed up his opinions due to lacking knowledge of the history and situation between US, ROC(Taiwan), and PRC.

1. Why on the earth that Taiwan government, TSMC, UMC, and Mediatek want to help PRC's businesses to avoid US sanctions?

2. Taiwan's semiconductor industry imported about 90% of the tools used for chips production. There isn't any chance they can reach a true decoupling unless they can reach 100% of supply chain independence. Taiwan government and businesses are very practical and sensitive about the geopolitics. Why they want to screw up the important US/Taiwan relationship to achieve a fancy supply chain independence dream that no any country (including Taiwan, Korea, US, and Japan) can ever achieve?

3. How about those IPs that are licensed to Taiwan's foundries by US companies? Just for this reason, there isn't any chance to achieve so called "decoupling".

4. There is no chance of decoupling when US, Japan, and European customers buy majority of Taiwanese foundries' output.

5. TSMC alone will spend $100 billion of CAPEX in three years. What's wrong for Taiwanese government to encourage more domestic suppliers in order to create more jobs and increase people's income there?

 
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In that Asia Time article, author David P. Goldman called Taiwan's policy to encourage domestic capabilities in providing semiconductor tools and materials as "decoupling" from US.

I think he dreamed up his opinions due to lacking knowledge of the history and situation between US, ROC(Taiwan), and PRC.

1. Why on the earth that Taiwan government, TSMC, UMC, and Mediatek want to help PRC's businesses to avoid US sanctions?

2. Taiwan's semiconductor industry imported about 90% of the tools used for chips production. There isn't any chance they can reach a true decoupling unless they can reach 100% of supply chain independence. Taiwan government and businesses are very practical and sensitive about the geopolitics. Why they want to screw up the important US/Taiwan relationship to achieve a fancy supply chain independence dream that no any country (including Taiwan, Korea, US, and Japan) can ever achieve?

3. How about those IPs that are licensed to Taiwan's foundries by US companies? Just for this reason, there isn't any chance to achieve so called "decoupling".

4. There is no chance of decoupling when US, Japan, and European customers buy majority of Taiwanese foundries' output.

5. TSMC alone will spend $100 billion of CAPEX in three years. What's wrong for Taiwanese government to encourage more domestic suppliers in order to create more jobs and increase people's income there?

What exactly does history has to do with it? You missed the fact that Cinese chip market now is bigger than US chip market. As always his view point is just one perspective. But you do not provide any reasonable explanation for why all of a sudden Taiwanese chip makers would decide to develope semiconductor making equipment manufacturing to Taiwan. Avoiding US control is a very logical explanation.
 
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What exactly does history has to do with it? You missed the fact that Cinese chip market now is bigger than US chip market. As always his view point is just one perspective. But you do not provide any reasonable explanation for why all of a sudden Taiwanese chip makers would decide to develope semiconductor making equipment manufacturing to Taiwan. Avoiding US control is a very logical explanation.

1. The history part (very short highlights):

PRC/CCP controls mainland China while ROC (Republic of China) controls Taiwan after the 1949 civil war. PRC/CCP doesn't get along well with Taiwan (ROC, Republic of China) and likes intimating and bullying Taiwan. CCP claims Taiwan is merely a province of PRC and should be reunited to the motherland. CCP claims they will kindly give Taiwan self-rule privilege once reunited, just like Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang have been enjoyed (sadly funny).

ROC established in 1911, 38 years before the start of PRC. The problem is CCP can't understand that as a democratic country, ROC has a fully functional political system, military, rules of law, and prosperous economy for a long time. Why they want to believe CCP's propaganda to "accept" something they already have for a long long time?

It's not difficult to see ROC government has zero interest to decouple with US, the single major arms seller to Taiwan and the majority of buyers coming from. There is no reason they want to help PRC, the bully, to avoid US' sanctions.

2. Taiwan's economic policy that encourages more domestic suppliers of semiconductors tools and materials has been there for a long time.

There is no sudden policy change from Taiwan government. The only difference is this time there is a guy wrote an article for a Hong Kong based online website claiming this is a decoupling scheme for helping PRC avoiding US sanctions.
 
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Totally hypothesising here, since I have no idea, but still, perhaps someone will find this useful:

1. Taiwan Silicone Shield has multiple "pillars". One of them is US customers of TSMC, for whom TSMC is irreplaceable, so the US is more likely to defend Taiwan. Another one is Chinese customers of TSMC, so that China would be less likely to attack Taiwan. This second part is weakened by US restrictions, so how can it be repaired?

2. TSMC depends on its US suppliers (also US-controlled suppliers) and also on US customers (although in that relationship TSMC has more power, since there's no alternative) and this gives the US power to control it. If the dependence was reduced, perhaps TSMC would gain more freedom to sell to Chinese customers.

3. It's almost impossible to replicate the whole semiconductor supply chain in Taiwan, but perhaps it's not necessary: only some suppliers are tightly controlled by the US, so they only need to replace those. Some of them are very hard to copy (e.g. ASML), but China is also working on it and if Taiwan manufacturers would be willing to work with China, they could lean on these efforts. Taiwan could end up in an interesting position, where they would be able to work with more suppliers than Chinese companies, but would also be able to work with Chinese suppliers and customers. This would fix the second pillar from 1.

4. TSMC might still not be able to work with China because of US pressure, but what if it's not TSMC? Maybe it could be UMC or a TSMC spin-off or a completely new company.

So instead of "decoupling" we say something like a "long term plan aimed at more supply chain independence and greater ability to work with China" and perhaps it doesn't sound so unrealistic.
 
From that interesting news, “Four Taiwanese trade groups and three nonprofit organizations representing the whole of Taiwan’s high-tech industry signed the deal.”

No government? No TSMC? No UMC? No MKT? And, they represent the whole of Taiwan’s high-tech industry? Must be joking. I am curious who they are? You might sign all the deals if you want but don’t claim you represent others.

Taiwan’s mainstream media (TV’s or Newspapers) don’t even bother to pick up this story. BTW, AsiaTimes? Never heard of it. Is it serious?
 
1. Why on the earth that Taiwan government, TSMC, UMC, and Mediatek want to help PRC's businesses to avoid US sanctions?

Because they want money?

It is to these days Taiwanese industrialists keep coming to mainland China to setup new factories.

If Taiwanese establishment at large wanted to largely ruin mainland economy, they could've just called back their money back, and shut down microchip exports.
 
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