One thing I heard from a guy working on chip for a big German car company was that they used to have a decades old contract with a major Taiwanese chip manufact

One thing I heard from a guy working on chip for a big German car company was that they used to have a decades old contract with a major Taiwanese chip manufacturer which had extremely good terms for the Germans. In particular with terms to delivery times, and fees for late deliveries, and price. This deal had apparently been used as a framework for the purchase of not just the then used chips, but pretty much all latter ones too. In retrospect the deal seems to have been at the very least partially politically motivated by Taiwan, but the chip manufacturer could not cancel the framework agreement without significant penalties. There was however an option for the car manufacturer to cancel quite freely, and when the news of the pandemic hit, they did. It seems like no one in the department quite understood just how extremely good the conditions had become over the decades, and after they canceled it, and decided they wanted the same deal back... Well lets just say they are at the back of the line despite paying substantially more than they used too.