I wonder what these comments would look like if this deal happened 2-3 years ago by Joe Biden.
Do you really have to wonder? It's a huge win for the US. The comments would rightfully be calling it a huge win for the US.
TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.
601–610 of 1001 posts
Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not buy them out? If you give everyone 100k it’s only 2.4 trillion. Or even better, just buy out the militant element.
Would you subject your family to a Cultural Revolution in exchange for 100k? Add several zeros and assurances of safe passage out of the country and maybe you'd be onto something, but that's not going to happen for numerous reasons. The PRC already buys the loyalty of who they can in Taiwan, but Taiwan nevertheless remains resolute.
The cultural revolution happened 50-60 years ago. What culture would change in Taiwan? Mainland and Taiwan already share a lot of media.
Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is hard to drill this in the mind of people who grew up under stable governments, but dictators have this terrible habit of sacrificing prosperity to gain control (often sacrificing the former without gaining the later). Being a dictator and surrounded by yes-man, they also tend to act less rationally and less predictably than your average democratic leader. History is full of kings who started terrible wars and g…
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He's probably rational, but he's certainly not democratically elected and has ousted all his enemies. What do you define as a dictator? He's accountable to no one.
Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.
#604Those thinking China vs Taiwan is like Russia vs Ukraine is greatly mistaken. The Chinese army after decades of build up is way stronger than Russia's, the enire PLA navy and airforce are built for a war with Taiwan. Ukraine still has Europe, Taiwan only has Japan, and has no border to any other countries. If the US wants to intervene, it must throw in its full weight, like the entire pacific fleet and some more, otherwise they won't be able to beat the PLA at its doorstep. With the current US administration, I can't imagine how it would do that "trade". I think it's far more likely the US will "sell" Taiwan to China for some deal that benefits the US financially or politicially.
Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
If bad guys do something, it's bad. If good guys do the same thing, it's good.
We don't have slave camps with Uyghurs though.
Those were the result of public terrorist attacks on China from domestic terrorists to a scale even larger than 9/11. People were slaughtered and those camps are an immune reaction to that slaughter from China. The media hides this from you.
China did an extreme move here. It’s bad. It’s not slave camps but more education camps or indoctrination camps. It’s forced indoctrination into modern society.
The thing with this is that it destroys cultures and eliminates freedoms but it is largely effective in the long run. Terrorist attacks no longer happen. People are not getting slaughtered by terrorist attacks anymore. Part of the question is which evil do you prefer more? There’s no easy answer. But western propaganda paints only one side of the story here.
Arguably there’s less blood on government hands here for China. The resulting war after 9/11 killed far more innocents than the education camps.
And it’s not just this. When you make progress and societal well being putting it as a priority ahead of individual freedoms you get china building an entire network of rail systems in less then a decade when California can’t even build a single high speed rail in 3 decades because it obstructs some nimbys freedom to have a good view.
Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.
#606Earlier quoted context omitted.
Democracy isn't when you have multiple parties. It's when you elect people to govern. Many americans think that America has a uniparty, despite all appearances.
I feel like you have it the wrong way around. There are a lot of political setups where you "elect someone" that are absolutely not democracies. I can be an authoritarian supreme leader who allows citizens to elect who will run their province (from my choice of candidates of course!) and I really don't think it's reasonable to claim that this situation is a "democracy". It's autocracy with democratic characteristics.…
Russia is a great example of this.
Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.
#607Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its easy to think in extremes, but the reality will be far more moderate than your characterization. Remember: US policies have a way of flip-flopping every two years as new Presidents and Senators take office, and its very likely that unless Trump can score some massive wins in 2025, Democrats will retake Congressional majority in 2026; the base is incited, if these comments are anything to look at. But, the directi…
Ur delusional to think dems are taking anything
All the data available supports the conclusion that the majority of Americans prefer progressive policies. The problem for Democrats in 2024 was the candidate, and thus, turnout.
- Biden won more popular votes in 2020 than any candidate ever (81.2M, versus Trump's 62.9M in 2016 and 77.3M in 2024).
- Trump's second term was the first Republican presidential candidate since Bush's second term, 20 years prior, to win the popular vote; and Bush had 9/11 to campaign on.
- If you discount that you have to go back to his father in 1988 to find a Republican Presidential candidate that won the popular vote. Seriously, again, I cannot stress this enough: Americans prefer progressive policies. We just tend to prefer cults of personality more.
- Many congressional districts swung Republican in 2024 by only four or five figures of votes, and Republicans only gained Congressional majority by a couple seats.
- Its very likely the United States is currently experiencing or will soon experience a recession. Its likely this would have happened with or without Trump, but the person in charge gets the blame, and it'll be very difficult to fight that claim when tariffs have been such a hot topic.
- Its also the case that DOGE's cutting of the Federal workforce has alienated a ton of Trump supporters who worked for the Federal government or related NGOs.
I think this is pretty clear when looking at the administration's actions: They know that they have to move quick on a ton of stuff in these first two years, because they only have two years with Congressional majority. The last two years of Trump's presidency will be a Republican executive branch and Democrat congress, and nothing will get done. Then whatever happens in 2028 will happen; hard to predict that far out.
You can go read my other comments if you think this position is coming from some crazed TDS democratic lunatic; I'm not. I'm generally pretty moderate and understanding of the more complex macroeconomic and sociopolitical context which has influenced Trump's policies. This is just the facts; anyone with money to bet would absolutely be betting that the American left is more pissed than they've ever been, and the blue wave in 2026 is going to be pretty decisive.
Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.
#608Even before getting into the geopolitics, isn't this almost exactly what the CHIPS act was supposed to do? You know, the one that the Trump team cut to shreds? This feels like it's all TV. Trump is doing what he's great at: slapping his name on work other people did in order to steal credit.
> You know, the one that the Trump team cut to shreds?
I looked this up and sounds like they let probationary employees go (40/140 employees at dept of commerce CHIPS office) + 20 voluntarily resigned. I wonder if that was intentional or just the usual DOGE indiscriminate chaos.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-chips-act-office-losing-191830...
The article does claim:
> The staff cuts, while significant, aren’t as deep as some within the government and chip industry anticipated. In particular, they won’t have a major impact on the teams responsible for negotiating with companies and evaluating their progress toward contractual benchmarks, a person familiar with the matter said. The chips office leadership urged against cuts to those departments in recent meetings with Lutnick.
Addtionally, NIST's CHIPS office also had probationary cuts...CHIPS has two parts, one subsidizing companies via Dept of Commerce and a 2nd big investment in public sector research which NIST was doing.
https://www.trendforce.com/news/2025/02/21/news-trumps-moves...
It's also congress assigned money so they probably can't claw it back (legally), the legislative branch controls the purse. But they could slow walk it or try to change the rules.
Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.
#609Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
A 'small' island with one of the most successful and thriving democracies in the East, that has world class industry. China cannot have a successful democracy on their doorstep, it undermines their perception of absolute Chinese superiority.
This is basically the George Bush argument "they hate us because of our freedom". Totally absurd.
They don't hate them, but it is an emberassment that a group from the same culture is so successful under a different political system that allows for more freedom. That combined with cultural revanchism about not breaking up the country (and having spent a lot of time there I can tell you it is strong) makes the existence of Taiwan as an independent nation a real sore point.