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Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

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Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#161

Post by kragen »

JavaBatman wrote: post #11

I am still amazed by the shortsightedness of how these critical and strategic goods are off-shore. No wonder why the supply chains are fragile and not robust. It should be illegal for strategic goods and components such as chips and semiconductors to be produced offshore. Yes, it will raise prices in the short and medium-term, but it will make the domestic economy and manufacturing sector more robust, resilient to su…

> I am still amazed by the shortsightedness of how these critical and strategic goods are off-shore.

You're not half as amazed as Xi is.

> Yes, it will raise prices in the short and medium-term,

Right now we have cutting-edge fabs in Taiwan and Korea. If we were to follow your recommendation, we would also have them in PRC, USA, Japan, Germany, the UK, India, France, Italy, Canada, and Russia, at least. In fact, that's more or less how things used to be. The difficulty is that this would mean increasing world fab investment by a factor of 6, which would probably make them all unprofitable until chip prices also increased by a factor of 6. Permanently.

However, there is still one country that uses this policy: North Korea.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#162

Post by throw0101a »

JavaBatman wrote: post #11

I am still amazed by the shortsightedness of how these critical and strategic goods are off-shore. No wonder why the supply chains are fragile and not robust. It should be illegal for strategic goods and components such as chips and semiconductors to be produced offshore. Yes, it will raise prices in the short and medium-term, but it will make the domestic economy and manufacturing sector more robust, resilient to su…

> I am still amazed by the shortsightedness of how these critical and strategic goods are off-shore.

At what point do goods go from being non-critical/strategic to being critical/strategic? At what point did car companies have to worry about chips being "critical"? At what point did smartphones become "critical" to people's lives?

Things were not critical at all, and then when few people were looking, they moved across the spectrum to an area part that is considered critical by some measure.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#163

Post by micromacrofoot »

rllearneratwork wrote: post #76

with Tesla, SpaceX, Samsung and other tech investing this heavy in Texas, when/will it surpass CA as a tech powerhouse of the future?

Can they get similar talent with draconian social policies like abortion bans? If I suggested moving to Texas my wife would (rightfully) tell me to go fuck myself.

There's been a lot of talk about Texas "turning blue" over the past few years and I wonder if these companies either moving their operations or building new plants there could be the tipping point.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#164

Post by yaacov »

csours wrote: post #36
JavaBatman wrote: post #11

I am still amazed by the shortsightedness of how these critical and strategic goods are off-shore. No wonder why the supply chains are fragile and not robust. It should be illegal for strategic goods and components such as chips and semiconductors to be produced offshore. Yes, it will raise prices in the short and medium-term, but it will make the domestic economy and manufacturing sector more robust, resilient to su…

How does making something illegal counteract economic forces? Hint: Look at Soviet Bloc economics. They imported high tech goods even after spending loads of money on trying to build them internally. I would agree that onshoring more of the supply chain makes a lot of sense, but I think it must be an economically viable solution. I don't know exactly how to do that, but things like having a guaranteed market (like we…

You might enjoy reading about https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export-oriented_industrializ...

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#165

Post by kragen »

missedthecue wrote: post #106
JavaBatman wrote: post #11

I am still amazed by the shortsightedness of how these critical and strategic goods are off-shore. No wonder why the supply chains are fragile and not robust. It should be illegal for strategic goods and components such as chips and semiconductors to be produced offshore. Yes, it will raise prices in the short and medium-term, but it will make the domestic economy and manufacturing sector more robust, resilient to su…

You don't make semiconductors out of thin air. They're made out of inputs that we have to buy from other countries. The United States cannot possibly produce its own sufficient supply of rare earths and silicon for instance, they must be extracted where they occur naturally.

The US did produce its own sufficient supply of rare earths and silicon for decades, they occur everywhere, mainstream semiconductors don't contain any rare earths, and I suggest you at least skim a Wikipedia article on a relevant topic before writing your next HN comment.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#166

Post by nathanm412 »

justapassenger wrote: post #28
guai888 wrote: post #18

‘Impossible':TSMC founder Morris Chang on US dreams for onshoring chip supply chain https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4327937 Morris Chang spent 25 years (1958–1983) at Texas Instruments.He knows US very well.

You have to take his words with a grain of salt. Without going into politics, it’s impossible to talk about TSMC without geopolitical context. It’s essential to TSMC survival for their production to physically stay focused in Asia.

It's essential to Taiwan's survival for production to physically stay focused in Taiwan. I don't know if the US would be as willing to defend Taiwan if our own recovery wasn't affected by the chip shortage.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#167

Post by eigen »

otrahuevada wrote: post #30

it makes perfect sense to have a factory right on your most critical client, even leaving the typically american grandiose fantasies of apocalyptic destruction aside. It even nets them a cool 3 billion dollars to do so, which I'm fairly sure is very welcome given Samsung's history of reinvesting this kinds of money for political gain. I do wonder why this isn't more common though, pretty much every gigantic company a…

Are they doing package and test at this fab or do they need to ship parts out to somewhere else, likely another country, before the client can use them?

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#168

Post by DavidPeiffer »

88840-8855 wrote: post #130
bell-cot wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This...but did Samsung quietly negotiate a "any further energy supply f*ck-ups are 100% on YOUR dime" deal with the State of Texas, or what? By several accounts, the TX grid got darn close to collapse last winter - at which point "ERCOT Op Center is next door, and we get top priority" would not get you a single erg.

What finance guy will ever approve this? I doubt that the service agreement would ever be approved with that clause.

Surely there's an insurance company that would take on that risk, and the government could pay for it. These government incentives are rife with excessive spending on a per-job/total economic impact basis. I see no reason why this detail would derail things.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#169

Post by adam_arthur »

rllearneratwork wrote: post #151
adam_arthur wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond specific companies, Texas has more favorable business climate and tax rates. Housing alone is such a huge knock against CA for new companies. Even paying somebody 500k there leaves them feeling middle class when trying to raise a family. Perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but in Texas they build like crazy to support population inflows. If you drive through Austin you'll see every third or fourth house is getti…

they are also not hostile to kids in public schools (CA dumbs down math, requires masks, requires CRT, etc.)

Yeah, I suspect things will reach a breaking point and the pendulum will swing back.

Just look at all the organized retail crime in Northern California. There's a new article pretty much every day about groups of 20+ coordinating mass retail thefts.

Voters explicitly put into place DA and laws that basically decriminalized crime, and now are bearing the fruits of that.

Don't think voters will continue voting for those policies now that repercussions being seen and lived.

Re: Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

#170

Post by kube-system »

optimalsolver wrote: post #116
deelowe wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more about national security and business continuity than cost. Costs matter most when things are running smoothly. However, COVID has taught us a hard lesson. When SHTF, you better have a back up plan. Making money on IP alone while someone else handles all of the manufacturing and integration work looks great on a spreadsheet. Then some state actor cuts off the supply chain (or a virus) and your genius MBAs…

How is relying on a foreign company helping the situation?

Samsung is probably more accurately described as a multinational company in this context. The location of a company's headquarters is not a primary determining factor for all different types of geopolitical risk. Like other multinationals, they have some ability to pick the jurisdictions they operate, and each of those locations have their own geopolitical contexts.

However, in this case, South Korea is also a close US ally. There is little risk to the US that the headquarters of Samsung is in South Korea.

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