The Chip Act USA and the potential unforseen consequences.

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Some of what I type here might not be 100% correct, because the information in China is not always correctly reported and real hard evidence is hard to come by, so if you do know something I don't please do correct me.

From Wikipedia

"The CHIPS and Science Act is a U.S. federal statute enacted by the 117th United States Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden on August 9, 2022. The act provides roughly 280 billion dollars in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States. The law does not have an official short title as a whole but is divided into three divisions with their own short titles: Division A is the CHIPS Act of 2022 (where CHIPS stands for "Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors"); Division B is the Research and Development, Competition, and Innovation Act; and Division C is the Supreme Court Security Funding Act of 2022.

It channeled more than $52 billion into researching semiconductors and other scientific research, with the primary aim of countering China. The bill passed the U.S. Senate by a vote of 64–33 on July 27, 2022. On July 28, the $280 billion bill passed the U.S. House by a vote of 243–187–1."

Whilst it is difficult to disagree that the repatriation of manufacturing is generally a good thing there has been criticism of the amount of money it is currently costing and the issue of an open cheque book for the future, but that is not the reason for posting here.

The Chip Act requires all US technical personel to return to America or lose their US citizenships https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/14/american_tech_workers_in_china/ this has led to an exodus of the foreign personnel keeping Chinas silicon foundries running and unfortunately for China, they have not been able to produce their own people to replace them - or they would already have done so. Presumably any US production technology will no longer be supported either, and the rumour (because it cannot be accurately verified) is that some if not all of these facilities have ceased production.

I'm sure I'm not saying anything new, that chips are in everything now, even childrens toys, and without their production, manufacturing of consumer goods in China (and possibly elsewhere) will grind to a halt. We are not going to notice this for months in the West, as goods on large container ships are already on the high seas heading to ports where their cargo probably isn't going to arrive on the shelves until next year. There is also an amount of chips already produced, and factories can use these up until they run out of them.

The US is not going to be able to build and equip its own silicon foundries for many more months let alone recruit and train the staff. As a consequence there might well be a supply shortage of many many products in a few months time, because there are no Chinese made chips to populate boards with.
 
Its the right thing to do.

Its only the bean counters that fed the east with tech on the promise of cheap labour. Its not just silicon that is being pulled out of the far east. In my world customers are specifically asking for tooling or parts to be purchased/sourced or tooled in China.
 
It will increase prices. That's the bottom line.

Our dependence on potentially vulnerable countries, and potentially aggressive countries (China) must reduce significantly.

It's all a little too late, so it will be playing catch up for many years, but at least it's a start.
 
It might be the right thing to do, but think of the short to medium term consequences. How many Li ion batteries use a simple chip which won't now be available, that means no laptops, no electric cars, no solar panels or power banks, let alone consumer products like TVs washing machines etc etc.

How many computer components are going to difficult to find because the boards are stuffed in China, how many smart phones ? The list extends to almost everything which has a plug, and worse some car parts which might make it impossible for manuacturers to meet emissions regulations.
 
Voltage regulators, clock oscillators and other such things are hard to come by or they're asking $70 for a $5 part due to low stock (at a reputable components supplier).
 
Why do you think there is so much tension building around Taiwan. Thats where a lot of the supply of semi conductors comes from. The US feels it needs leverage due to China's position as near monopoly source of rare earth metal and this is part of the reasoning behind taking a much more protectionist position. China is on an aggressive path to dominate the world economically and that's a dangerous situation with any foreign power let alone a communist autocracy. The latest cementing of Xi Jinping for another term and removal of any but the loyalist of advisors should be sending alarm bells ringing in western democracies. Whilst this has to be handled with diplomacy its a policy (CHIPS) that I tend to agree with. The problem for China is that it doesn't have the human capital capable of developing the next gen of super chips and has been leeching from other markets. This will be a bigger problem form them in the mid term than the west.
 
Short term pain for long term gain. US should have been getting TSMC to build foundries there years ago. They have a Samsung one in Texas now. So yes there might be a short term shortage but in 10 years a lot of this tech will hopefully be bought back to the US and Europe. The UK should try and get either of the big chip makers to build a foundry here.
 
Its insurance in case China invade Taiwan or even a natural disaster there. COVID showed just how risky supply chains had become. For the US its good politics to repatriate high tech jobs. The danger is the usual pork barrel shenanigans.
 
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They know this and it’s a short term pain for long term gain, from the US and the west’s perspective. Russia shows that to rely on them for oil and gas whilst fighting them in a war is just counter intuitive. This will be the same for any kind of important resources, like Silicon manufacturing.

I would be for the UK to start some kind of plant here too like TSMC. Better late than never.
 
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They know this and it’s a short term pain for long term gain, from the US and the west’s perspective. Russia shows that to rely on them for oil and gas whilst fighting them in a war is just counter intuitive. This will be the same for any kind of important resources, like Silicon manufacturing.

I would be for the UK to start some kind of plant here too like TSMC. Better late than never.

If we had any sense we'd be offering Samsung or TSMC tax breaks/grants to build here.
 
Biggest economy takes measures to stay biggest economy against nearest rival.
Onlookers clap.
its rival is cheating its way up, and what do you think they would do once the Chinese become dominant?
Look at what the Chinese did in Manchester last week, no respect for UK laws.
 
The Chip Act requires all US technical personel to return to America or lose their US citizenships https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/14/american_tech_workers_in_china/ this has led to an exodus of the foreign personnel keeping Chinas silicon foundries running and unfortunately for China, they have not been able to produce their own people to replace them - or they would already have done so. Presumably any US production technology will no longer be supported either, and the rumour (because it cannot be accurately verified) is that some if not all of these facilities have ceased production.

I'm sure I'm not saying anything new, that chips are in everything now, even childrens toys, and without their production, manufacturing of consumer goods in China (and possibly elsewhere) will grind to a halt. We are not going to notice this for months in the West, as goods on large container ships are already on the high seas heading to ports where their cargo probably isn't going to arrive on the shelves until next year. There is also an amount of chips already produced, and factories can use these up until they run out of them.

The US is not going to be able to build and equip its own silicon foundries for many more months let alone recruit and train the staff. As a consequence there might well be a supply shortage of many many products in a few months time, because there are no Chinese made chips to populate boards with.

I think this is conflating different things, Chinese chip manufacturing and Chinese manufacturing of things containing chips.

For example, your phone (say an iPhone) might be manufactured in China, the chips inside it however come from Taiwan.
 
I think this is conflating different things, Chinese chip manufacturing and Chinese manufacturing of things containing chips.

For example, your phone (say an iPhone) might be manufactured in China, the chips inside it however come from Taiwan.
If only it were that simple. Some chips come from Taiwan, but I'm not convinced they all do, and that's the point, we don't know were all the stuff in products come from nor how intertwined supply streams are.

The point I was originally trying to make is that many products we perhaps take for granted might not be available in 3 months time.
 
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