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Apple Supplier TSMC to Open Advanced Chip Factory in Arizona

This policy has no weight and will be dissolved, or part of a negotiation for a revised TPP. The added cost to manufacture won't be surpassed by demand to purchase these products at a much higher price to match premiums of the same products in Taiwan.

Trump will be gone November and McConnell's Senate will be Blue.
 
GuruZac said:
Didn’t take long for this to go pedantically political.

Great news in my opinion. As others have stated, would be great to see this as the start of a trend to either relocate manufacturing back home or at least to an ally.
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I agree, it’s great news. But he will take credit for it, even though it’s probably been in the works for a long time.
 
Basically I like that manufacturing jobs goes back to developed countries as we also needs a diversified job market. However there are some concerns that people easily overlook:

1. Do USA have a competent work force for this?
2. Will reducing overseas manufacturing decrease the buying power and affect sales globally?
3. Will overly patriotic protectionism means alienation between nations, also between traditional allies? Will this be a security risk?
 
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The question to ask is, Why AZ?

5nm in 2024 will basically be a mainstream node, TSMC will be on 3nm+ /2nm then. So this doesn't seems to be about volume production or diversity but much more about having possible defence contract made in US. Those type of products were never meant to be on leading edge anyway.

Edit: Turns out I was getting ahead of myself.

This is based on the WSJ article before the TSMC announcement.
For those interested you should read the full announcement here [1], basically it is a small / mini fab likely designed for specific customers ( Military ) only.

[1] https://www.tsmc.com/tsmcdotcom/PRListingNewsAction.do?action=detail&language=E&newsid=THGOANPGTH
 
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Highly doubt TSMC will move their cutting edge to the US. Taiwan won’t let them even if it made sense financially. Taiwan having the best semiconductor manufacturing and being a critical supplier to both China and the US provides it more security that any defense treaty.
 
Emanuel Rodriguez said:
and if Obama was president, you'd be saying "Thank you, Obama!", no doubt. This is how foolish-looking politics can make a person.

To be clear: I'm not giving Trump all the credit. The fact is that while many of his policies were clearly good for business, it's the free market itself which inevitably generates wealth, and deserves the lion's share of that credit. Even bad economic policies can potentially lead to growth if the free market manages to find a profitable workaround, which happens as well.
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No one cares about political football but if Obama was still President he wouldn’t be bragging and lying on Twitter one moment and then attacking people he disagrees with in the same breath. That’s not a political opinion. That’s a fact that even a Trump supporter would agree with because people and media love the spectacle. It’s embarrassing and destructive and the country is tired of the reality TV show in the White House. I think 4 seasons is enough.
 
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mannyvel said:
Supply chain diversification at its best. Soon Apple will be doing the once-impossible: making iPhones in places that aren't China, India, or Brazil.
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What are you on about? Most CPUs are not manufactured in China, India, or Brazil. It says assembled, not made, in China on iPhones for a reason. China imports a lot of components like the Camera, screen, CPU, glass, and various chips and antennas for the iPhones from counties like the Japan, U.S., and Korea and makes some of the simpler components like battery and casing. This changes nothing.
 
mannyvel said:
Supply chain diversification at its best. Soon Apple will be doing the once-impossible: making iPhones in places that aren't China, India, or Brazil.
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There are still hundreds of components made in Chine. Also, you do know that TSMC do not assemble the phone right?
 
mdriftmeyer said:
This policy has no weight and will be dissolved, or part of a negotiation for a revised TPP. The added cost to manufacture won't be surpassed by demand to purchase these products at a much higher price to match premiums of the same products in Taiwan.

Trump will be gone November and McConnell's Senate will be Blue.
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I wouldnt get ahead of yourselves here -- Odds are Republicans add seats in the Senate and Biden won't cut it.
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Quicksilver867 said:
I read about this and think it sounds great, but Foxconn in Wisconsin doesn't really give me much optimism.
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The difference in this scenario is Foxconn is a Chinese company and TSMC is Taiwanese. The latter will end up living up to its commitments moreso than the former.
 
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It's unfortunate this thread has degenerated into a bunch of irrelevant political rants.

People, it's a chip fab, in a state which already has a number of fabs, from a number of different companies.

cgsnipinva said:
The difference in this scenario is Foxconn is a Chinese company and TSMC is Taiwanese. The latter will end up living up to its commitments moreso than the former.
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Foxconn is Taiwanese.
 
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szw-mapple fan said:
What are you on about? Most CPUs are not manufactured in China, India, or Brazil. It says assembled, not made, in China on iPhones for a reason. China imports a lot of components like the Camera, screen, CPU, glass, and various chips and antennas for the iPhones from counties like the Japan, U.S., and Korea and makes some of the simpler components like battery and casing. This changes nothing.
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Actually most of Intel's fabrication plants are in the US -- they are just assembled into the ceramic casings overseas.

List of Intel manufacturing sites - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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EugW said:
It's unfortunate this thread has degenerated into a bunch of irrelevant political rants. It's a chip fab people, in a state which already has a number of fabs.


Foxconn is Taiwanese.
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You are correct my mistake. Apologies - thought its headquarters were in mainland China
 
iPadified said:
Basically I like that manufacturing jobs goes back to developed countries as we also needs a diversified job market. However there are some concerns that people easily overlook:

1. Do USA have a competent work force for this?
2. Will reducing overseas manufacturing decrease the buying power and affect sales globally?
3. Will overly patriotic protectionism means alienation between nations, also between traditional allies? Will this be a security risk?
Click to expand...

You do realize Arizona is home to multiple Intel fabrication facilities - are you asking if the US has competent workforce for this? Really? That is somewhat insulting. We do manufacture quite a bit of high end items in the US.
 
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wigby said:
No one cares about political football but if Obama was still President he wouldn’t be bragging and lying on Twitter one moment and then attacking people he disagrees with in the same breath. That’s not a political opinion. That’s a fact that even a Trump supporter would agree with because people and media love the spectacle. It’s embarrassing and destructive and the country is tired of the reality TV show in the White House. I think 4 seasons is enough.
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He wouldn't need to, the MSM would be shouting it from the hilltops!

Twitter allows unfiltered access to the voters or have you simps not figured that out yet?
 
Salty Pirate said:
He wouldn't need to, the MSM would be shouting it from the hilltops!

Twitter allows unfiltered access to the voters or have you simps not figured that out yet?
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I love how some people forget how Obama attacked his political opponents - even telling supporters how to get up in the face -- of "Our enemies".

Selective memory.
 
konqerror said:




The fab tools themselves requires huge amounts of power, from vacuum pumps, abatement equipment (very nasty gasses are required), thermal processes, etc.

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Thanks for the links.
I started to read the article from the first link and came upon this right at the start of the article:

Large semiconductor fabs use as much as 100 megawatt-hours of power each
hour
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Erm what..."each hour" is redundant, or just say 100 Megawatt per hour.

I'll find out if there's more mistakes like this, again, thanks for your reply.
 
cgsnipinva said:
Actually most of Intel's fabrication plants are in the US -- they are just assembled into the ceramic casings overseas
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That’s exactly my point — a lot of the higher value components are not manufactured in China, so this isn’t anything that deviates from the status quo.
 
I think what we will have is an R&D focused plant, the manufacturing section will be almost 100% automated by Chinese Manufacturing Engineers. In the end, people who can get a job regardless will get more job opportunities and will get paid even more due to increased demand, and people who can't get a job will still not have a job and now they must pay even higher rent.

For those who have everything, more will be given, from those who have nothing, everything will be taken. - Bible
 
WoodpeckerBaby said:
I think what we will have is an R&D focused plant, the manufacturing section will be almost 100% automated by Chinese Manufacturing Engineers. In the end, people who can get a job regardless will get more job opportunities and will get paid even more due to increased demand, and people who can't get a job will still not have a job and now they must pay even higher rent.

For those who have everything, more will be given, from those who have nothing, everything will be taken. - Bible
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The stated plans are for a manufacturing plant. The US has dozens of semiconductor manufacturing plants that have nothing to do with China American companies like Intel, Micron, Nvidia, Freescale, and others have lots of manufacturing capacity in the US churning out microprcessors, memory chips, graphics, etc.
 
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