Taiwan and Korea built capable semiconductor fab ecosystems because of their countries’ economic development position, not despite their precarious political po

Taiwan and Korea built capable semiconductor fab ecosystems because of their countries’ economic development position, not despite their precarious political position. People need to understand fabs are both skilled labor and automation intensive. Apart from that there are supplier ecosystems that only exist in those regions. Korea and Taiwan needed to have globalized export economies. Their education standards and culture are a good fit for scale manufacturing, both still had conscription military service. The labor at the time 80-90’s and currently is still highly competitive for their skilled labor force. EU semiconductor is not a joke but the tools and wafer size are not state of art. I know EUV machine is a product of EU, but that moonshot tool is something that can only come out of a long dev government subsidized program like CERN and the bosson. They aren’t exporting that tool into the EU too it’s going right to Asia. The EU is full of high living standards and well educated people but the semiconductor production is mainly serving local consumption (or local companies supply chains, automotive parts). EU does research but that doesn’t translate to at scale fabs. EU gets protective and wants to secure local supply for their own tool vendors and needs to understand that smaller local machine brands cannot compete with the majors for the run of mill machines. EUV is a different story that thing is anomaly and power to them for following up on it. Also strong labor organizations don’t attract capital. And semiconductor cannot take the month of August off. US has capital and plenty of cheap land and cheap labor but still more expensive than Asia standards. Depending on state non existent labor protections and competitive environment permits. Not great education standards. Excellent skilled immigration. But still not leading in semi production especially with the old guard just keep losing. Still strong #2 though. And the ecosystem is nowhere near as integrated as Seoul. Like would you leave your hame family and friends in Oregon to startup a next gen Fab in Phoenix? No way. Geography isn’t doing US favors there for dynamism.