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Taiwan says 40% shift of chip capacity to US is 'impossible'
(www.reuters.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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To be fair, this all started under the Biden administration with the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.
The US is increasingly concerned that, if China invades Taiwan, it will completely lock them out from semiconductor manufacturing and crater the US economy. Rather than flex their soft power and exercise a little diplomacy like the US used to do in decades past, they've apparently decided that the invasion of Taiwan is inevitable and the only course of action is to bolster semiconductor manufacturing at home.
Trump, of course, has all the subtlety of a torpedo and his rhetoric here has been needlessly antagonistic... but yeah, this whole thing started under Biden and now Trump is pretending it was always his idea. So really the thing he stole was the policy.
Biden's investments in the groundwork for future semiconductor manufacturing on US soil was intelligent planning for the future with little potential for short-term reward. A rare display of integrity for american politicians.
tRump slashed that funding, and is now demanding another country overseas, a traditional ally of the US, should simply move their manufacturing capabilities to the US because trump said so. It's idiotic.
The two things are absolutely not the same. Don't portray them in the same boat.
I don't call handing tax dollars to the richest companies in the world to set up for profit companies intelligent planning or a smart move. I call it corruption. Robbing the poor and paying the rich, to ensure the rich have enough product to continue to rob the poor as they are accustomed.
Makes perfect sense. He gets to grift, steal a Biden win, and please his big business donors
CHIPS was a response to the pandemic supply chain crunch. It was finding for local businesses to get up to speed so we weren't dependent on a single supplier on the other side of the planet. PEDOnald revoke the majority of that finding, and decided threatening taxes on US citizens to force that single supplier to also produce things here was somehow a better solution...
While the CHIPS act was started under Biden, it was completely different from what is being done now. It was about developing a domestic source of semiconductors as a hedge against Taiwan being invaded and was done cooperatively with the Taiwanese with mutual benefits. The Taiwanese still owned the manufacturing here, so they would still benefit if the Chinese came invaded. Biden was doing what was smart to do and also had benefits for other countries, including EU allies, since everyone knows those plants in Taiwan are rigged to blow at the first hint of invasion..
Trump has removed the benefits and added tariffs and threats. He didn't steal the policy. He inherited it and then changed it to be something evil.
So like in summary:
Biden Strategy: Bring taiwan companies to US as a redundancy and supply chain contingency.
Trump Strategy: Demand shit from Taiwan and threaten them when they fail to meet goals.
Like the trump strategy only incentivizes Taiwan to pursue a diplomatic solution with China.
The plants are rigged to blow in an invasion? That is smart. Iraq did that in the first persian gulf war, he blew the oil fields the Americans were seizing. We all expected him to do that in the Iraq war, but for whatever reasons they never did. He might as well have.
But that would be such a massive loss of investment, and probably a real disincentive to invasion, those factories are not something that can be replaced in one year. Especially with all the specialized machines, where there are only one manufacturer of.
I clearly don't know it for a fact that TSMC has done that, but the idea is a widely talked about strategy for protection. U.S. politicians even talk openly to the press about us blowing up the fabs if Taiwan doesn't.