Taiwan Says Trump Wrong to Say Island Took US Chip Industry

In my view, fmr Pres Trump's comments are quite similar to the frequent comments that immigrants are stealing jobs from US citizens.

In both cases, no one is stealing or taking anything.

To see what is actually happening, look at those who are doing the giving.

US companies. And why?

Well, in the former, it is because the companies can hire the undocumented immigrants (i.e., give the jobs to the undocumented immigrants) for a far lower cost than US citizens (and companies wonder why unionism is on an upswing, but I digress...).

In the latter it is because Taiwan's chip industry provided to US companies the needed resources more cheaply than the US companies building those resources themselves.

It is all about profit for the wealthy shareholders.

Nothing more.

So, once again, fmr Pres Trump on the campaign trail seems to be favoring the wealthy over workers.

Another view...

Trump says Taiwan stole America's chip industry. But that's not true
www.cnn.com

... Former US President Donald Trump raised eyebrows last week when he accused Taiwan of snatching America's crown in the $500 billion business of making computer chips.

In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, the Republican presidential nominee repeated his assertion, first made last year, that the island democracy and US ally had taken "almost 100%" of the industry from the United States. "We should have never let that happen," he added.

Except, it didn't. Industry experts tell CNN that, far from stealing, Taiwan grew its own semiconductor industry organically through a combination of foresight, hard work and investment.

School children on the island know that the father of its world-beating chips sector is Morris Chang, a 93-year-old Chinese-born American, who started Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) in 1987 at age 55 after a long career working with semiconductors in the US.

At the time, the industry leaders were Intel (INTC), Motorola (MSI) and Texas Instruments (TXN), where Chang had previously worked. But in starting TSMC (TSM), Chang had an entirely different business model in mind, which was completely revolutionary at the time.

"We had no strength in research and development, or very little anyway. We had no strength in circuit design," he recalled in a 2007 oral history project recorded for the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

"We had little strength in sales and marketing, and we had almost no strength in intellectual property. The only possible strength that Taiwan had, and even that was a potential one, not an obvious one, was semiconductor manufacturing," he said. ...

So, how did Pres Biden deal with corporate america giving chip manufacturing to Taiwan?

President Biden Signs CHIPS and Science Act into Law
www.whitecase.com

... On August 9, 2022, President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act (H.R.4346), which seeks to bolster the US semiconductor supply chain and promote research and development of advanced technologies in the United States.1

The Act is comprised largely of provisions extracted from the US Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) and its House alternative, the America COMPETES Act, which Congress failed to reconcile in conference negotiations this summer.

The CHIPS and Science Act encompasses the most popular provisions of the USICA and COMPETES bills, but modifies and adds to those provisions in important ways. Key provisions and updates in the CHIPS and Science Act are as follows: ...