1) gov't support: TSMC's had plenty of gov't support from the getgo and my understanding is that the govt still has some financial stake in TSMC -- which would

1) gov't support: TSMC's had plenty of gov't support from the getgo and my understanding is that the govt still has some financial stake in TSMC -- which would be a red flag in the US. Samsung has a big $15B fab in Austin, TX aka, FTZ foreign-trade zone, where Apple's A chips were made until the early 2010's, but after Apple moved to TSMC in Taiwan in 2012-13, it stopped investing in smaller nodes -- now, it's mainly producing memory products (and Tesla's FSD chips). All their latest nodes (< 14nm) are in South Korea. 2) labor cost: probably very insignificant. While they employ high-paying high-tech workers, it's a capital-intensive, not labor-intensive, business. Both TSMC and Samsung spend over $10+B annually on CAPEX. 3) brain drain?: Morris Chang worked for TI for decades before founding TSMC. He pretty much started the outsourcing business in the late 80 single-handedly. Sure. I don't agree with Trump on a lot of things, but he's at least doing something to bring them back.