Taiwan tells Uncle Sam its chip ecosystem ain't going anywhere

Taiwan's vice-premier has ruled out relocating 40 percent of the country's semiconductor production to the US, calling the Trump administration's goal "impossible." In an interview broadcast on the CTS channel, vice premier Cheng Li-chiun said she made clear to US officials that Taiwan's semiconductor ecosystem cannot be moved and its most advanced technologies will remain domestic. "When it comes to 40 or 50 percent of production capacity being moved to the United States... I have made it very clear to the US side that this is impossible," she said, according to The Straits Times. Cheng led Taiwan's January's trade delegation to Washington, which secured reduced US tariffs on Taiwanese goods - from 20 percent to 15 percent - in exchange for increased investment into America's tech sector. At the time, US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC the deal aimed to relocate 40 percent of Taiwan's entire chip manufacturing and production capacity to America. A Department of Commerce release cast the agreement as a "massive reshoring of America's semiconductor sector." Taiwan, which produces more than 60 percent of global semiconductors and roughly 90 percent of the world's most advanced chips, insists it gained this leadership position by investing in the tech when other countries didn't. Former Intel chief Pat Gelsinger supports this view, publicly stating a couple of years ago that countries like Korea, Taiwan, and China put in place long-term industrial policies and investment in chipmaking, while the US and European nations failed to do the same. Curse of AI to push up PC prices as memory and CPU shortages bite Micron continues fab spending spree with $24B NAND storage plant in Singapore Micron finds a way to make more DRAM with $1.8bn chip plant purchase The world is one bad decision away from a silicon ice age Cheng reiterated this in her interview, saying that "an industrial ecosystem built up over decades cannot be relocated." Taiwan views its semiconductor dominance as strategic defense against Chinese aggression. Beijing claims Taiwan as its territory and threatens reunification by force if necessary. Even Lutnick acknowledged this "silicon shield" dynamic last year, noting China's open ambitions: "We need their silicon, the chips so badly that we'll shield them, we'll protect them." TSMC considered relocating its chip fabs in 2024 due to China threats but decided against the idea given the difficulties. Any Chinese invasion would devastate the global tech sector, as The Register pointed out recently. Most of Nvidia's GPUs are made in Taiwan, as are AMD's processors and Qualcomm's smartphone chips. The supply of these would be cut off by any invasion, and there is no other source these companies can easily turn to. ®