To be America’s enemy is dangerous; to be its friend, fatal.
As opposed to what? Losing Taiwan to China and thus a 100% loss for the US?
Just give up your nukes and we will protect you.
I would absolutely not trust us to provide any protection, even IF they fold to the demand. The smart play here is to call the bluff. Because it is a bluff.
I feel bad for Taiwanese politicians. They can’t afford to provoke a major tantrum from Trump. They still need to purchase American arms, even if the US can’t be counted on to help in an invasion. Some performative flattery and groveling might be in order. If it was me, I’d swallow my pride and cite the impossibility of moving entire chip production chains instead.
Taiwan doesn’t need to buy any US arms. The US needs a taiwan that asks for help if China invades so they can intervene and not lose access to the chips. An armed Taiwan benefits the US in that case.
If Taiwan moves chip production to anywhere but Taiwan the US will defend that location instead
They need to be talking to Saab Aero and EADS and Dassault and Rheinmetall and Hyundai Military and so on
Likely they’ll just quote numbers of moving facilities to the U.S. for server production, which will be a restatement of numbers that were already given in past years that Trump can claim are from him. There are facilities that were built in Tennessee/Kentucky/Alabama that I know of for companies like Quanta who make the AI server racks for Meta, Google, and such. So they are already up and running and will show numbers that will show possibly hundreds of millions a day in sales. (Each new server rack is around 2-4 million, and that’s just one line I know of)
Or do that and cite the decades of work and investment it takes to build that industry.
Seriously. Remove protection and the US will lose access to all the production when the mainland invades.
They already did in Wisconsin. Kind of that was just tsmc but…
I don’t know. That may be why all the generals were recalled. Someone smarter negotiating Taiwan.
Huh? Given who’s running the show these days? Not likely.
Not them. The billionaires they take orders from
The rich fucks have the tiger by the tail. They’re not actually in control anymore.
And after you move here you will still lose protection, because that’s exactly what “America First” entails
Remove the only reason we agreed to protect you or we won’t protect you… FFS America would you please remove this party of morons from power already?
Sorry, we can’t. Eggs or some shit.
They should just play it like FoxCon did in WI. Many loud words and big promises. Got what they wanted and never actually did much of anything. Capitalist chefs kiss. Not like Donnie is going to care for 10 seconds after the speech is made.
And once production is moved lose it anyway.
Stay with me here for a minute… Consider that instead, they could be granted Federal subsidies to expand their production of chips within mainland USA, instead of moving it from Taiwan to the U.S. This is, of course, assuming a sensible Presidential administration with non-insane, asinine policies which would encourage foreign investment and guaranteed the safety of said foreign labour advisors to train American operators and technicians from ICE (South Koreans apparently very unimpressed with their arrest and deportation despite valid work permits).
TSMC and Taiwan have all the leverage. If China invaded Taiwan, the US would be fucked and semiconductor supply cripple the states, and all the stuff Trump is investing personal money in (crypto, AI, etc)
If the US wants a robust semiconductor industry, they should break Intel’s chip design and fab into two separate companies, and lean into more chip-act type investments.
Makes sense that they would be safer not moving production to the US. The US is clearly only a fair weather friend now. If the the regime has what they want at home then why care about others.
Why would Donnie protect Taiwan if he already has 50% of the chip production on-shore? Having 50% likely means having a completely Taiwan-independent supply chain. I feel like the only thing Donnie would achieve by pressing this issue is Taiwan’s people shifting towards negotiations with PRC.
If the Taiwanese feel there’s no deterrent against invasion on their side, then they’d feel there’s little to stop China from taking them over over when they decide to. Then the question becomes how would that takeover look like. Violent, non-violent, autonomy, no autonomy, and so on. Getting a good deal becomes less likely as time goes by and China catches up on the high tech front. So they’d prolly go for it sooner rather than later. Donnie can’t help himself from helping his sworn enemies can he.
Considering China is about to take the whole island by force, it’s in their best interest to move anyway. Sadly, that won’t include any of the Taiwanese people who don’t want China destroying their country.
Sure, let them rub a magic lamp and a genie will create a factory in USA with 50% production capacity.
Clown ass country.
Not many Americans are smart enough to work at a chip foundry.
