Trump says he told TSMC it would pay 100% tax if it doesn't build in US | Hacker News Reader

Trump says he told TSMC it would pay 100% tax if it doesn't build in US

reuters.com

23 pointsironyman17 comments

TSMC is such a (sadly) hilarious "cooperation" story:

1. Hey, TSMC, come to the US, we will give you a fuckton of CHIPS Act money and extend the US military umbrella over Taiwan.

2. Oh, yeah, it turns out building and runnig an advanced fab in the US is 3x more expensive than in Taiwan. Too bad.

3. Hmm, now that you are here, why don't you co-invest into Intel and share some of your IP?

4. No? Here, have some 100% tariffs. Nice doing business with you.

0. TSMC, you're not allowed to sell to certain clients like Huawei because we said so.

TSMC should call the bluff. They arent exporting anything to US. Apple, Nvidia, AMD and Intel are. Those four are over 50% of TSMC output and their clients will pay tariffs, whats more there is nowhere else to go but TSMC for those four.

The same reason TSMC doesn't sell out to a well-funded Chinese conglomerate: Taiwan's desire to maintain independence.

He says a lot of things.

Edit: Apologies, didn't mean to be (that) flippant. I meant more like, we can't look much about what he says. Only look at what he does, and it seems he can do incredibly destructive things.

He does a lot of them, too.

I don't see any reason why he might not put 100% tax on any random business that doesn't do what he tells them to do, given what else he's demonstrated no concern about actually doing.

Unfortunately, given what he's also said of the trade deal that he himself signed, nobody can seriously do a deal with him ever even if it seems to be in their immediate interests: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-usmca-nafta-tariffs-can...

This entire persona of the cool, calm, detached person who acts like they are above the fray the the actual real life day to day political realities is so tiresome.

I understand it’s a nice personal coping strategy so that you can convince yourself that don’t need to actually do anything but the whole “you’re overreacting” crowd is one of the most embarrassingly misguided groups of people I’ve seen in a long time.

But this time, he actually does it. For better or for worse.

So Trump can just impose arbitrary tax rates on individual companies now? What's next, imposing arbitrary tax rates on individuals?

I miss the rule of law. It was nice while we had it.

"Now" is a misnomer. They're laws from when we were spending absolutely massive amounts of money keeping Taiwan, Germany, Poland etc independent. (Read: a long time ago.) They also include arbitrary property confiscation and a whole slew of other powers. Ignorance is bliss.

It seems that Trump is out of control and Americans are lethargic or just scared. We see one crazy news after another, people on HN don't even bother commenting anymore.

I’m convinced that reading about stupid people doing stupid things will make me stupid. So I don’t bother.

This is what roughly 1/3 of voting age adults in the US wanted (and another 1/3 think doesn’t matter). Those people are over-represented in tech.

This is what they think “winning” is.

Perhaps China should get Taiwan. Seems like a much better option than remaining allies with USA.

Ignorance is bliss.

And TSMC should accept any tax imposed without further consideration. Good luck to Nvidia, Apple, and the rest finding competitive alternatives.

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