231–240 of 593 posts
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Why do you care about the origin of the company?
I consider it unethical for my tax euros to subsidize an American company.
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It's about national security. A fab is necessary for national security
Subsidizing an American company is not necessary for Germany's security. In fact, it undermines it.
Wow. For those old (or well-read enough in history) enough to have a sense of just how dominant Germany once was, world-wide, in science, technology, chemistry, optics, etc. etc....this news feels kinda like a tombstone of German identity.
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Germany used to have a semiconductor industry like Intermetall (acquired by micronas acquired by TDK). The problem is that IMHO German automotive industry is not willing to pay a cent more than necessary. They do only care about short term profit. They triggered the chip crisis in Germany by stopping there orders and then restocking. I am not sure if any government can fix this.
Infineon doesn't count?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Fab
"The X-FAB Silicon Foundries is a German group of semiconductor foundries, with headquarters in Erfurt (X-FAB Semiconductor Foundries AG is located in the south east industrial area between Melchendorf and Windischholzhausen). The group specializes in the fabrication of analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits for fabless semiconductor companies, as well as MEMS and solutions for high voltage applications."
And:
https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2021/03/apple-to-invest-ov...
"Apple will invest over 1 billion euros in Germany and plans European Silicon Design Center in Munich"
Couldn't Volkswagen build their own foundation for a sovereign and independent ecosystem?
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> but simply to make everything unduly complex and costly I disagree with that characterisation, doing business in France is not that complex. Amsterdam has a giant advantage though - the English language is widely spoken and accepted, which really isn't the case in Paris. If an international organisation is looking to move from London, Amsterdam makes much more sense than Paris, even if we disregard the taxes side o…
Not that complex... Right. It's complex and costly enough enough that France keeps losing out. It's ridiculous, really, because there is no good reason for this. It's a mix of lack of self-awareness and ideology. France is not an isolated case, though. Many countries are like that, sadly.
Respectfully disagree. The current president, who was just reelected, literally won his first campaign on "i'll improve things for business, make it easier, enable startups, optimise government expenditures". And he enacted many business-oriented reforms that have enabled quite a startup boom ( for the French and EU standards, of course it's nowhere close to the US due to a myriad of factors like available financing). There's awareness of the challenges, and what ideology would that be?
Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue. These are incredibly important for geopolitical stability and should be distributed world-wide. We've centralized too many fabs in too few places in the search for low cost.
Will it make much of a difference, though? Sure they can fabricate the chips, but a lot of the raw material needed will come from places like China.
What a government needs to do to attract real manufacturing entrepreneurs:
- pro family policies (for people)
- pro immigration (for people)
- cut environmental laws (for capex make-right)
- cut business taxes (for gm make-right)
- cut personal taxes (for people)
- fight back against china-sponsored economic maneuvering at the multilateral level (to create a competitive market)