What leverage do they have ? Not buying TSMC chip ?, lol
US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief
391–400 of 560 posts
Re: US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't blackmail. A security guarantee has value. Exactly what value is hard to say since the US is the only credible seller of such guarantees in this world order
Like with Ukraine? Like with Iran? The US has proven its word is literally worthless and beholden to the whims of a dictator. At this point, Taiwan would be foolish to not start working on a secret nuclear bomb program. North Korea has proven its the only way to actually protect yourself.
Not sure why this is being downvoted … ?
Re: US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief
#393Re: US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief
#394Tariffs kinda make sense when you have a deficit in a widely available item. Big trade deficit with Bangladesh? Sure you can buy cheap textiles from Thailand or Vietnam or something. Unfortunately this approach does not work when you lack a viable domestic alternative and you're up against a monopoly. What will the US do if TSMC does not blink? Not buy TSMC made chips? Obviously that is impossible, so the logical con…
more likely than not I think this ends with a vague promise, a loudly declared victory, and a quiet defanging of the promise or just outright ignoring it in the future
Re: US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> 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?
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 nationali…
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.
Re: US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief
#396Tariffs kinda make sense when you have a deficit in a widely available item. Big trade deficit with Bangladesh? Sure you can buy cheap textiles from Thailand or Vietnam or something. Unfortunately this approach does not work when you lack a viable domestic alternative and you're up against a monopoly. What will the US do if TSMC does not blink? Not buy TSMC made chips? Obviously that is impossible, so the logical con…
> Tariffs kinda make sense when you have a deficit in a widely available item. Big trade deficit with Bangladesh? Sure you can buy cheap textiles from Thailand or Vietnam or something.
Sorry, how do they 'make sense'?
What's the problem with a trade deficit with Bangladesh? And in your example, you'd just shift bilateral trade balances around, without impact the overall trade balance of the US?
I could perhaps believe that an overall trade deficit is bad (maybe..), but I've yet to hear why bilateral trade deficits should matter, especially with places like Bangladesh that are not strategic rivals or are even allies like Japan or Taiwan or NATO.
Re: US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
“ What will the US do if TSMC does not blink? Not buy TSMC made chips?” I think their assumption is that TSMC will certainty give in to any demands. Taiwan needs US support to defend against a much worse (and unfortunately just next door) adversary.. China.
That’s probably true, though I’d pay a 50% tariff just to get working drivers vs. whatever Intel was shipping 5-10 years ago. AMD and Apple offer that; Intel still(?) does not.
I've been using Intel hardware on Linux for more than 10 years. The instances of driver issues that I can think of are very very few and they were never related to anything Intel did.
Re: US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
>so the logical conclusion is that American consumers will end up paying the tariffs. That’s been the point all along… they are significantly raising taxes on the bottom 90% of Americans and most are too stupid to even understand it. Gotta pay for those tax cuts for the wealthy somehow.
This isn’t even accurate. So far, suppliers and middlemen have been absorbing most of the costs of the tariffs (look at CPI). So basically the US government was able to take a slice of the profit from everyone but the consumer. Seems pretty smart to me?
Short term elasticity and long term elasticity aren't the same thing.
Whoever has the greater elasticity doesn't pay much of the tax.
In most markets, long run elasticity of supply is very, very, very high. So that means demand side (consumers) end up paying the tax.
But short term elasticity of supply can be low-- dominated by capital costs and inventory.
Re: US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief
#399Tariffs kinda make sense when you have a deficit in a widely available item. Big trade deficit with Bangladesh? Sure you can buy cheap textiles from Thailand or Vietnam or something. Unfortunately this approach does not work when you lack a viable domestic alternative and you're up against a monopoly. What will the US do if TSMC does not blink? Not buy TSMC made chips? Obviously that is impossible, so the logical con…
If there's one product we have domestic alternatives to it's semiconductors. We're a couple nodes behind TSMC. Using US only foundries or paying a premium for TSMC is not the end of the world.
Semiconductors are not fungible. Using US alternatives also means dropping all the AI plans and subsidies, at least on US soil. The big AI data centers would all end up in China, owned and managed by subsidiaries and leased back to the parent.
Re: US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief
#400Someone with a gun to their head is the only party that would buy it. Latest mindfactory data suggests that in gaming consumer space is now 96% AMD, 4% Intel. Seriously: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1mfu3cq/this_... And doesn't sound like their next or next next nodes are in good shape either
I just bought my first AMD chip in years (a 9950X3D), the last one I had was from the early FX series. After how poorly those FX chips performed, I swore off AMD for a long time. Ryzen definitely caught my interest when it first came out, but Intel still had the edge in performance and stability back then, so I stuck with them. That started to change with the 7800X3D, and now with the 97/9950X3D lineup, AMD is clearl…
Probably longer, Ryzen 3000 came out 6 years ago. That was the beginning of AMD's CPU dominance IME. I built my first AMD system ever in 2019 - I had been Intel-only since my first computer (a PIII)