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Comment by temp667 | Hacker News Reader

China def is stockpiling more chips I think. The Huawei situation really brought home to china how the US or others could basically try and cut them off and they are doing a lot of things to reduce that potentially impact (all out on chip mfg, chip orders etc) so having stock may be of benefit to them in that environment.

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Not stockpiling, a lot of people just do actual hoarding, and speculation.

Buying out all stocks of some rare MCU which only has probably few million units on the market at any given time at $0.1 just to resell for a few dollars later is quite real given the unprecedented squeeze.

How much would a car company pay for a rare, out of stock chip which is the only thing missing in a car worth $100k?

There is murmur in Chinese BBSes frequented by industry insiders about distributors intentionally either stuffing their part stock counts, or diminish them to play the price.

So Martin Shkreli, but instead of pharma, chips.

And designing products around perceived availability that doesn’t actually exist.

Just-in-time manufacturing is pre-medidated on the idea that whatever you need is available immediately for a fair price.

I think we'll see some of this in the future where a company's only purpose may be to hedge on bets on what will be unavailable in the near future for "a fair price"

A "market-maker", in the form of a financial firm that just skims pennies off, but for chip supply, instead of other financial instruments :)

I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being like buying power "in bulk" where you pay a little more but there's a guarantee that when "the chips are down" (sorry, couldn't resist), the company will eat the difference.

I do think the market won't use these suppliers a lot just like the US-made masks which got millions of orders but only after china stopped sending stuff.

After China restricted other companies from entering their own market then the only fair thing to do is to restrict Chinas' access to other markets.

I'm not a trump supporter but he did the right thing on this front.

It's a totally fair game.

> I'm not a trump supporter but he did the right thing on this front.

It's a shame you have to admit that. I'm a liberal and think we should be putting a hard squeeze on unilateral trade. This policy makes sense for the US and other countries regardless of your party.

You can see that the US is starting to ramp up hard core. With international navies now sailing into the South China sea and a deafening rise of anti-CCP news and (admittedly) some propaganda, player two has finally entered the game.

I live near an air force base and over the last few weeks have seen (and definitely heard!) an almost daily fighter jet exercise. This hasn't happened in years.

China is going to be in a very tough spot soon.

>It's a shame you have to admit that. I'm a liberal and think we should be putting a hard squeeze on unilateral trade. This policy makes sense for the US and other countries regardless of your party.

People like to join teams. So if I have an opinion that's not part of the "team" or part of the "other" team then people like to attack those opinions. That's why I make sure I say something along the lines of "Hey, I'm not on the other team, but I have a different opinion."

This "join teams" thing is a constant frustration.

If there is a problem, the best solution likely frustrates either team, at least a little.

And so time is wasted in bullshittery rather than getting on with the job.

> I live near an air force base and over the last few weeks have seen (and definitely heard!) an almost daily fighter jet exercise. This hasn't happened in years.

Funny you should mention that... I live in the UK and a few weeks ago there were military maneouvers near my house. I've been here 18 years and this is the first time they've happened.

Happened across the country too.

When the trading stops, the bloodshed starts and bodies flop.

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