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> the hard-earned lessons from TSMC’s first time building a fab in America 25 years ago IIRC, one of the hard lessons was that it was expensive to operate a fa

> the hard-earned lessons from TSMC’s first time building a fab in America 25 years ago IIRC, one of the hard lessons was that it was expensive to operate a factory in the US. It's not even the cost of paying workers, but that the workers needed a lot of training. Or my interpretation: the American workers are simply not as efficient as the Asian counterparts. This also reminds me the story in the Obama's documentary "American Factory", in which the hourly productivity of American workers was about 1/3 (or 2/3) of the Chinese workers. So, I have a pretty pessimistic question: can American workers still be competitive even if we move manufacturing back to the US? I really really hope that Americans are as competitive as they are decades ago: they earn more than people in other countries, yet the unit cost of products were lower than those of other countries because Americans simply led in productivity.

scrubs 4y ago
Aside from the soap opera part --- US v. Taiwanese culture and whether a TSMC wafer in Arizona is more Taiwanese than American --- here's what all managers and engineers should want to know: will these American plants continuously improve? If the plants can be profitable and products from it can be profitable there will be a good positive feedback to attract, retain talent, and to grow the market for same. The US has let globalism probably overshoot 30% ... so yah we suck right now compared to TSMC at manufacturing 'cause we spent our time doing supply chains ordering from Taiwan. If we still suck after 10 years, then let the criticism fly. Globalism is not dead; c'mon. But it does need some straightening out. The US is finally at a place where we prefer jobs (with attendant security) over cheap prices.
- hintymad 4y ago
  Yeah. If the US manufacturing can't become competitive in a global market, then whether globalism is dead will not matter: there was no globalism 100 years ago, yet the US economy arose while Britain's declined, simply because the US could build better, cheaper, and faster. Allyn Young didn't believe that the finance center would move from Britain to the US because Britain was appeared so powerful 100 years ago, well, the rest was history.

scrubs 4y ago

Aside from the soap opera part --- US v. Taiwanese culture and whether a TSMC wafer in Arizona is more Taiwanese than American --- here's what all managers and engineers should want to know: will these American plants continuously improve? If the plants can be profitable and products from it can be profitable there will be a good positive feedback to attract, retain talent, and to grow the market for same. The US has let globalism probably overshoot 30% ... so yah we suck right now compared to TSMC at manufacturing 'cause we spent our time doing supply chains ordering from Taiwan. If we still suck after 10 years, then let the criticism fly. Globalism is not dead; c'mon. But it does need some straightening out. The US is finally at a place where we prefer jobs (with attendant security) over cheap prices.

hintymad 4y ago
Yeah. If the US manufacturing can't become competitive in a global market, then whether globalism is dead will not matter: there was no globalism 100 years ago, yet the US economy arose while Britain's declined, simply because the US could build better, cheaper, and faster. Allyn Young didn't believe that the finance center would move from Britain to the US because Britain was appeared so powerful 100 years ago, well, the rest was history.