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It will not work out over the long run. This is corruption; it breeds corruption, and corruption creates victims. Victims don't put up with it forever and as t
by exasperaited 1y ago
It will not work out over the long run. This is corruption; it breeds corruption, and corruption creates victims. Victims don't put up with it forever and as the old cold case appeal spiel goes, "alliances shift over time".
More prosaically, in the short term: TSMC are now effectively compelled to acquire Intel entirely or at least a controlling share, right?
Unless Trump's shakedown requires them to own 49% but then bans them from owning more than 50%, which would be the end of the USA as any sort of free market -- and I concede that is possible, because the USA now has a leader who acts more and more like an autocrat -- aren't TSMC essentially compelled by their own interests to find the just-greater-than 1% somewhere?
If you're blackmailing me into owning almost all of something but not getting control of what I owned, I think the logical next step is to forcibly gain control, yes? Because it turns the tables.
Not least because acquiescing even to buying 49% paints a target on my back.
Trump is not saving Intel: he is guaranteeing it is going to get broken up and sold off. He is destroying it. (More to the point he is immediately tying its existence to the success or failure of his own Asia-facing foreign policy, which means he is effectively asserting control over it)
- paganel 1y agoTSMC is not going to get over the 50% threshold because it has no free will in this whole matter, as the very existence of Taiwan, and hence of TSMC, depends on the political will of the US. Otherwise I fully agree with you, this will definitely not work out in the long run, but who cares about the long run anymore in this day and age?
- exasperaited 1y agoBut they have to try, right? Otherwise as you say, they are essentially operating under Rubio and Trump's control as a tool of the State Department. The other important thing about this is that it dirties Intel almost immediately with presidential cheeto dust. So the value is going to fall over the long term, and this isn't the last sell-off they will have to do. Can you stop TSMC or a stalking horse for TSMC buying up parts of the rest? Trump has created a powerful victim here.
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoWhy would China annexing Taiwan have any direct effect on TSMC ? I'd imagine they would be happy to have TSMC still selling to NVidia, Apple and AMD, and therefore a powerful lever in case of future US export controls/etc.
- adgjlsfhk1 1y agobecause even without deliberate sabotage a war in Taiwan would shut TSMC down for at least a decade. Changing the toilet paper supplier can drop yield by 20% until they sort it out. How do you think a warzone will affect it?
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoTSMC built a fab in Arizona that in 2 years was up and running delivering chips to Apple, so it doesn't take that long ... Obviously a protracted or nasty war would have a severe impact, but it's hard to see why China would want to harm TSMC, even if worse case for US they stopped them from exporting.
- adgjlsfhk1 1y agoyou're assuming way less action from the US than there would actually be. it's not about the exports, it's about the supply chain to supply a fab. they need euv machines, wafers, thousands of specifically sourced chemicals etc. it's not about what China wants, it's just not feasible to operate a fab in a warzone