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Comment by ldoughty | Hacker News Reader

But the US government has proven to be unreliable in maintaining commitments -- even words on paper are meaningless as it doesn't seem to stop them from changing the deal later and demanding more ("I have change the terms of our agreement, pray I do not alter them further"), and then another request demanding more. Would TSMC be doing the government a favor and gaining protection, or are they being extorted? ("would sure be a shame if we doubled your tariffs again...")

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Does it really matter? Does TSMC have a choice either way?

They’re a globally important company but they’re not ASML and they’re stuck between two superpowers and the threat of potential total war. They’ve had the misfortune of being sucked into geopolitical maelstrom and those tides are far too strong for any company to resist.

>> Does it really matter? Does TSMC have a choice either way?

Sure. Go home and make chips. Pass the tarrif costs on to customers. Would US customers have a choice?

Taiwan is too dependent on the USA ATM to make that choice. If they were to go it without the USA, the only choice would be to become an actual bonafide province of China, they aren't going to exist on their own. Almost everyone else outside of eastern Asia, however, can make a different choice.

EUV was developed with in a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between the US Department of Energy, Intel, ASML, and so on - giving Congress control over who ASML sells the EUV technology to.

So yes, US companies do have a choice. They can lobby Congress to cut off TSMC from their main hardware and parts supplier entirely, crippling it altogether, except for their Arizona plant which is ripe for nationalization for natsec.

It’s not as simple as just buying an ASML machine and make chips. Otherwise Intel would have already done that.

For the cutting edge stuff TSMC is a monopoly.

TSMC certainly brings a lot to the table but if they were completely knocked out, it would just deprive the world of the top end of fab capacity for a while. On the other hand almost every fab in the world depends on ASML for parts and maintenance, even the old fabs on legacy nodes.

But most of those other fabs are in China! How does that help the US?

EU-based company can ignore USA same way USA ignores everyone else now.

I think there's reason for the EU to ensure that there's no semiconductor manufacturing monopoly.

So the EU offering something like nuclear weapons sharing à la that which Germany etc. would probably be reasonable if the US bullied Taiwan too hard. But I don't think it's happening, I think people want good relations with China.

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