Hacker News Reader

Comment by hwbehrens | Hacker News Reader

In case you are wondering what this does (like I was), Wikipedia states "This bill is designed to solve [American dependence on China] by reducing reliance on Chinese manufacturing of semiconductors and increasing America's scientific and technological achievements."

Basically, it allocates a bunch of money for supply chain and production improvements.

View on HN

Imagine using government money to fund Intel, AMD, Micron, Apple, etc with combined capitalization over 4 trillion dollars. Instead they should be levying massive windfall taxes on these companies' overseas cash hoards, and using those revenues to fund onshore semiconductor startups.

The US government has been funding semiconductor manufacturing since Fairchild, which spawned two of the companies you listed.

Overseas cash reserves are a separate issue that can be fixed by removing the corporate tax. It should be 0%, we would all be better off if that were the case.

Yes, corporate income tax is deadweight loss.

Aren’t fabs and all that like multi-billion dollar projects? How does one realistically become a startup in that space when the capital to start is so intensive? (At least these days - idk about back in the past)

You are under-estimating how much cash these American companies are holding.

I’m not but this is basically wealth redistribution taken quite far. You may as well be advocating for full on Marxism at that level.

Which is fine. But just know your audience? (A hyper capitalistic startup crowd???)

Tax Intel to fund semiconductor startups.

That would be amazing.

Keep in mind that China will not stop being a problem, it just moves it around. The CCP will have more people in the US with family back in China, so they can manipulate those in the US to steal and spy for them. They will grow the presence of CSSAs and universities will become increasingly dependent on income from fulltime Chinese students, which will paradoxically disincentivize US universities from educating US students. One needs only look at the UC system to see this is true (they're not shy about it, plenty of details here https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-...).

I'm not saying the COMPETES Act is good or bad, just that it's going to reshape the China problem a bit.

And for those itching to downvote me: the Chinese people are fine folks. the CCP is a helluva problem.

>universities will become increasingly dependent on income from fulltime Chinese students

I mean, sure, because Americans keep voting to defund public higher ed.

Ah yes, because every PhD immigrant that comes to the US must be a CCP agent. Why don't we just dispense with the thin veil you're trying to hide your racism behind?

I think this is a bit of an extreme response. I don't think the parent was suggesting that every Chinese PhD student in the US (or even a majority of them) is a CCP agent, just that it does happen, and the more Chinese PhD students who end up in the US, it's likely that more of them will be beholden to the CCP in some way.

I think your framing as "agents" is a bit sensationalized. You're evoking images of these highly-trained spies willing to do anything to steal for their country. My expectation is that most folks are just regular-Joe type people who just want a good education, but are pressured by their government to pass back certain kinds of information (with under-specified by scary consequences for their family if they don't comply). I have a lot of sympathy for the people who get caught up in this situation. They're people who are trapped in a way that requires them to pay a higher (moral) price to obtain a good education. I'm not sure I'd have the strength to behave any differently if I were in their shoes.

(Also consider that the US's industrialization was fueled by plenty of academic and industrial espionage. That doesn't make what goes on today ok, but let's not pretend our historical hands are clean.)

America is many times less racist than China is. I think it is proper to debate the degree to which allowing Chinese citizens to immigrate helps or hurts America.

Thank you for the tldr.

Does government allocation of funds make a difference when competing with China? It would seem that the Chinese government would simply match/re-up the industrial policy to be more competitive.

If we're concerned about over reliance on Chinese manufacture, why not create a tariff?

If we build fabs, we have fabs. We also have less technology development leaving the country.

Even if there was a tariff, new fabs would still cost billions.

Also, how you manipulate trade is governed by lots of treaties and some basic economics (i.e. a tariff would just make more or less everything more expensive and not change the situation much for quite a while)

Tariff may help US company to buy US product, but it won’t encourage anyone else to buy potentially uncompetitive US product.

At some point, we need to increase product competitiveness, which ultimately benefits everyone.

That or sanction china so they can’t build competitive product, like Huawei.

And in this case there is no US product to buy. US semiconductor manufacturing simply cannot compete on the global stage, hence the need for this investment.

the US can't compete with China's artificial suppression of the Yuan price to help export prices, or the high levels of exploitation and lack of rights & regulations to benefit Chinese workers.

Of course, it can. The solution would be to depress the USD. It's just that the US decided it is more profitable to extract value by holding the reserve currency.

the US government isn't in control of the dollar rate - the central bank is private.

Right, but the US government is in control of who gets to run its central bank. Certainly it would take longer to change policy than in a country where the central bank is run directly by the government, but it's more than possible to do.

We both know that this isn't true.

First, the US government gets to run an arbitrary deficit, which is essentially the same as printing money.

Secondly, the Fed's board is appointed by the government and can be recalled by the government.

Thirdly, if the US government wanted they could change all of the rules governing the fed.

It has nothing to do with not being able to. The US just decides it's more profitable to have the reserve currency. You can't have it both ways, and it's senseless to complain about not being able to have a cake after eating it.

who said they wouldn't be able to take absolute control of the fed? My point was only that they aren't currently. They'd have to make some serious changes in order to do so!

They currently have more than enough control over the fed to be able to plan this kind of policy. They simply need to choose the next head of the fed to be one that agrees, as they already do.

Yes, because our marginal returns should be much higher than China’s given how far we’ve fallen. We can, just like China did, copy the leader to catch up, while they pour investment into unexplored and speculative frontiers.

It surely would still make a difference, even though China's reaction would partially negate it, right? When there's government stimulus money to be had, someone's going to jump on the opportunity to use it up, even if prices are lower from China.

Someone's pocket is going to get fat, but I highly doubt that any real competitiveness can come out of it.

As any government subsidy, it usually not only does not bring the desired result, but whatever it does bring costs much more than any free market participant would be willing to pay for it. Unless that is subsidised as well.

China very successfully was able to reduce whole industries to nothing by subsidising those industries in China and subsidising the price of their output. One example is Rare Earth, there used to be some production of those things outside of China, there are none today. Want a magnet for your motor? China!

Maybe WTO restrictions?

But yeah I would just do both.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com