It's interesting that trade wars (Japan, China) were involved in both chip shortages, 1988 and 2020. What's more interesting is that the exact roles played by t

It's interesting that trade wars (Japan, China) were involved in both chip shortages, 1988 and 2020. What's more interesting is that the exact roles played by the trade wars are equally unclear, because both shortages are caused by multiple factors and the trade war's role are heavily politicized. In 1988, the U.S. computer makers were attacking the US-Japan semiconductor pact, claimed that it reduced Japanese production and export volume, thus responsible for triggering the U.S. chip shortage, said it was helping one industry but hurting another. Industry leaders like Compaq, Atari, Apple were lobbying for abolishing the Semiconductor Pact restrictions. On the other hand, the U.S. semiconductor industry denied this claim, and argued that raising demands and production issues were the real problem, not the Semiconductor Pact. Both sides had some persuasive-sounding arguments. In 2021, the situation is almost exactly the same. It was claimed by Huawei and others that the US-China trade war triggered the chip shortage due to panic buying of large volumes of chips in fear of U.S. sanctions. Another claim is that some orders to Chinese SMIC were canceled in favor of TSMC and Samsung due to the trade war, reducing the supply further. Meanwhile, others denied these claims and said the main problem is the raising demand. History never repeats itself, but it rhymes. Both trade wars definitely played a role, if not a major, at least a minor one. But to what extent, exactly? Difficult to tell.