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TSMC faces tough choices amid rumors for Intel foundry collaboration
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- code51 2y agoHow convenient that insiders jumped on INTC with this "rumor" 3 days ago. They made about 25% from this in 3 days. Easiest money from a rumor.
- baq 2y agoThe SEC really doesn’t like such plays. No wait that was a couple months ago.
- mrbluecoat 2y agoIs the SEC still around? I thought Elon announced he was eliminating all federal agencies this month containing a letter in the word Valentine.
- sangnoir 2y agoThe husk of the SEC with its brains scooped out is a useful tool to sic upon one's competitors or ideological enemies. I wouldn't be surprised by an SEC investigation into OpenAI in the next few years.
- IAmGraydon 2y agoYeah I was thinking the same thing. It's only a matter of time before Musk goes after Altman with the newly weaponized agencies.
- SR2Z 2y agoCan the SEC investigate private companies?
- sangnoir 2y agoYes. Public companies just have more reporting requirements, but as long as an organization deals with Securities like shares, they fall under the SEC's ambit, public or private. I think the OpenAI's non-profit to profit transition would have warranted a looking into by any administration, I suspect there will be additional personal animus driving this specific set of players.
- outside1234 2y agoThe SEC will probably still exist to punish enemies. So update your bio with a MAGA photo and something racist.
- SecretDreams 2y agoIf this was a real thing that would play out, the stock would go up far more than 25%. Still time for normal laymen to get in. Or it's not going to happen, by which case, it's going to go back down. Coinflips for everyone!
- code51 2y agoSometimes the play is only about the announcement itself, not the implementation - news about a possible big news - just like upcoming Trump tariffs.
- yndoendo 2y agoDaniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate in Economics, described this in his book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow". Saddam Hussein's capture caused oil industrial stock to climb because of the association between oil and the Middle East. After people realized that Saddam Hussein actually had no relevance to the price of oil or the product, the socks fell back down. Stock market is quite often pushed emotion and asinine assumptions versus logic and reasoning. Enough social media echo cambers can easily sway stock prices momentary to make a quick buck.
- Winblows11 2y ago> U.S. government has proposed three potential cooperation options to TSMC > 2. TSMC joining other firms as investors in Intel Foundry Services (IFS), a division being spun off from Intel, with TSMC transferring its technology as part of its shareholder role. > On the other hand, if TSMC rejects the proposals, the U.S. government could impose a 100% tariff on chips made in Taiwan When US can't compete, they have to blackmail/steal/sanction to rescue their failed corporations. The same stealing accusation they level at China.
- alephnerd 2y agoTaiwan added similar ToT clauses when they backed TSMC, UMC, PSMC, and others back in the 1980s-2000s. Intel is absolutely lobbying for this to hamper TSMC, but Taiwan's industrial policy ain't a saint either. At least this spurs some amount of Capex spending in the US.
- fritzo 2y agoAgreed. I learned much from Joe Studwell's book "How Asia Works" (2013), where he argues that among countries in the Asian region, those whose economies flourished were those with protectionist trade policies and export discipline, leading to the creation and honing of domestic industry.
- alephnerd 2y agoIt's more prosaic than that. It's just helping local donors and closely aligned businesses. A lot of the "ministerial advice" story (the uber powerful ITRI, METI, etc) is to a certain extent a rewriting of history. A major reason why these bureaucratic orgs were so successful in Asian countries was explicitly because of the revolving door - after your 20 year stint at ITRI or METI, you'd join as an advisor for one of the affected companies or start your own consultancy. This isn't to say that they made bad choices (they didn't), but it absolutely was done due to collusion between regulators and businesses. The Trump-era "politician aligned businessman" model is the norm across Asia - it's a major reason why Morris Chang lobbied against the CHIPS act, Hyundai lobbied against easing automotive tariffs, Tata lobbied for 5% sales tax on EVs but 25% sales tax on Hybrids and 50% on ICE, etc. The Asian Model of Development is predicated on "Access Money" to use Yuen Yuen Ang's typography of corruption.
- bloomingkales 2y agoThis sounds like a “reciprocal” play against China. Everyone has been saying China uses this tactic to steal IP. The dirty little secret is that they did this to Tesla (suddenly they have all this homegrown EV tech after they let Tesla into the country), and I think Elmo is pissed. The other dirty not so secret is that Deepseek just trained against OpenAI (stole it). It’s a Cold War.
- alephnerd 2y agoThere were murmurs about something like this even during the Biden administration. There is bipartisan support for bringing as much manufacturing capacity back to the US as possible - especially in packaging which is almost entirely outsourced because of unit economics and outsized subsidies by APAC players. The main difference is that a lot of the hardball tactics flew under the radar during the Biden admin. Also, Taiwan ain't China.
- 7speter 2y agoThis was probably drawn up as an option, but is everyone here gonna ignore that theres a new administration in the whitehouse and Intels previous CEO (who, at least publicly, was very optimistic that Intel could pull a turnaround all on its own) was recently ousted?
- alephnerd 2y agoIntel's leadership has been lobbying for this at a bipartisan level for almost half a decade now. This saga has been going on since 2018-19 and Pat Gelsinger is himself Republican leaning.
- bluGill 2y agoChips are too imporant to modern war for any country to be unable to make them. I mean the entire chip not just a part. the entire chain from raw minerals to a complete circuit board needs to be in your county. don't forget to design the above too. Small countries better join something like the eu and nato because they cannot ro alone.
- UncleOxidant 2y ago> 3. Allowing Intel to handle the packaging process for TSMC's Arizona-based operations. WTF does that achieve? TSMC fabs all the advanced chips and Intel becomes just a packager? Window dressing.
- silisili 2y agoFor anyone else like me who wasn't familiar with what semiconductor packaging is - https://news.skhynix.com/semiconductor-back-end-process-episode-2-semiconductor-packaging/ https://news.skhynix.com/semiconductor-back-end-process-epis...
- georgeburdell 2y agoPackaging is gobbling up more and more of the backend process, especially for chiplets.
- inverted_flag 2y agoCurrently, all the Arizona-made chips have to be sent back to Taiwan for packaging, which defeats the purpose of having the fab in the US in the first place.
- matthewfcarlson 2y agoIsn't this sort of like Ford announcing they'll just package Toyota engines into cars? I don't think anyone would call a car window dressing? Packaging has become far more than just coat chip in epoxy/plastic and bond wires onto die.
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- catlikesshrimp 2y agoWhat would be the result of the 100% tariff? Making the imports more expensive OR buying even more tech from China. The second one sounds like the worst possible result I can Imagine. Stablishing the packaging plant in the US sounds like the best option. The US would be copying what China does, but much better than partnering with a US company in the fab space. Technology transfer is unacceptable for Taiwan's survival (geopolitics)
- wmf 2y agoWhen it comes to chips, China doesn't have what the market wants. Most TSMC customers would just pay the tariff while some would switch to Samsung Foundry.
- DeepCope 2y ago74% of the semiconductor market is <7nm, which China can produce, so China can serve the majority of the market. Only 26% of semiconductor market is less than 7nm. https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insight/infographic-q1-2024-semiconductors-foundry-smartphone-ap-share https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insight/infographic-q1-...
- sharpshadow 2y agoApart as mentioned the tariff is a bluff, it’s clear which option TSMC has to take isn’t it?
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- budududuroiu 2y agoHonestly, Taiwan should just start selling export controlled chips to China. Trump kicked UA to the side, he’ll do the same to TW, might as well make a buck while at it, China is gonna catch up sooner or later anyways
- colechristensen 2y agoI really can't think of an upper bound for US response to an action like that.
- budududuroiu 2y agoThe TW legislative is controlled by a slim majority that would support a rehash of the CSSTA [1], with the runner up for the presidential race calling for it on the campaign trail. The US is already far behind on weapons deliveries and owes TW more than $20bn in delayed weapons shipments. I don’t see the lower bound to what the US response might be [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_Service_Trade_Agreement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_Service_Trade_A...
- FpUser 2y agoTaiwan can be friends with the US and keep selling them chips while keeping knowhow to themselves. Or they can be friends with others with the same results. Sanctions are not gonna help in this case. Of course the US can bomb Taiwan but I think it will lead straight to WWIII with all the cherries on top.
- snailmailstare 2y agoI think the US is going to be inundated with thousands of actions going on between other countries to replace it and it will be able to respond to dozens of them. They can of course choose long preexisting legislation as a hill to die on, but there are going to be a lot of hills and they could also pretend it never mattered to them.
- Aaronstotle 2y agoTaiwan can offer Russian advanced chips in exchange for nuclear weapons
- FpUser 2y agoI think TSMC is better off telling them to sod off. The whole goal of these deals is to transfer tech and knowhow to the competitors in the US. Threats of tariffs is irrelevant I think as the US also wants to put tariffs on China. They can just wait it out.
- DeepCope 2y agoTSMC should sell to Huawei and China if US gets too uppity.