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.
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 conclusion is that American consumers will end up paying the tariffs.
>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.
It has nothing to do with stupidity. Stop painting people as idiots because they exist in one of the most information hostile environments in human history.
This isn't some natural state that's unrecoverable. The people you describe have been given a highly addictive media environment tailor made to engender outrage and drive behavior. It shouldn't be a shock when most people cannot resist it. The first step to changing it is not writing them off or insulting them for being had.
it feels fair to call tariffs a VAT that goes away if the manufacturer produces things domestically which seems… reasonable? raise revenue and encourage domestic manufacturing.
yeah, it sucks that I can’t buy a JetKVM right now. otoh being dependent on (often) adversarial nations for everything we buy is also not ideal.
Sure that's potentially one effect- but I'm not sure it's the most important.
The other effect is to reduce international trade and the kind of national interdependency that creates, and so makes, large scale war highly unlikely.
The US is also trying to use it's economic power to force people to choose sides ( cf secondary sanctions on India ).
So while Trump might be anti-forever wars he is busy creating a world where WWIII is much more likely.
With this administration, it's probably just more blackmail, in the form of "it would be a pity if nobody came to the rescue when China eventually puts its Taiwan plans in motion! (Not that playing ball is a guarantee of anything either)".
Every promise of this administration is worthless, so why even bother? Either they protect you, because they don't want the chip tech to fall to China or they don't.
Buying half of Intel isn't going to change anything
> it would be a pity if nobody came to the rescue when China eventually puts its Taiwan plans in motion!
Wouldn't that just mean that Taiwan has to choose between two villains, and China can take the advantage of this by changing its narrative and taking the position as a hero, protecting Taiwan from the US.
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
> 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.
Trade deficits in isolation aren't good or bad but because the US has the world reserve currency it must supply it's currency to the world.
This basically forces it to have a trade deficit with everyone which over time can hollow out manufacturing sectors. Making the whole economy vulnerable to shocks and ultimately causing it to fail.
It's similar to "Dutch disease," where external demand overvalues the currency and harms tradable sectors.
It's not sustainable without careful policy management, and attempts to weaken the currency via tariffs, devaluation, or some other mechanism.
You might not like Trump or his approach but he is directionally correct and does have a powerful bargaining chip (access to the US market - which is basically on track to be the only 1st world consumer driven economy 5 years from now).
To the same extent that other forms of taxation make sense. I wish people had this same sudden interest in protecting the free market and maximizing trade when we're taking about income tax or sales tax or property tax, etc.
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.
More people need to hear this. Similar argument when they tried to stop China from buying certain types of silicon - "Oh well... anyway!".
I am not American, nor am I Chinese. Both of those countries have the capability to make enough compute to do whatever the hell they want. I am, however, European...
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.
I don't know why analysis like this doesn't go a bit deeper. Yes americans will pay more, but TSMC will also see less demand. Intel has it's own foundry, maybe it can start competing against TSMC, because now TSMC costs a lot more and intel's cost of manufacturing in the US to compete against TSMC can be recouped much better thanks to the new market prices set by the TSMC tariffs?
Government's shouldn't put up with monopolies either, if it wasn't for trump's political baggage, HN would be all over this I'm sure, TSMC is already investing on US factories which even without purchasing a share of intel, it would force them to use those factories and bring them online sooner. We've had multiple unfortunate wars due to dependence on foreign resources that don't have good/sufficient competition state-side, that is not a good pattern to repeat.
If TSMC doesn't blink, maybe they'll get their way for now but all their American projects and in general doing business in the US will be unpleasant and costly until 2028+. Which is cheaper? I don't know, I'm asking because a lot of opinion on the subject isn't talking/explaining about the actual numbers and nuanced economic considerations.
It doesn't work if you don't have 1:1 product, which Intel foundry absolutely doesn't. Not in performance, price or just ease of use. No one is going to risk years and billions to get it working on Intel, that's a sure way to lose your edge.
Companies (like Nvidia) will just raise prices and if demand drops they will divert more of it to countries like China and EU. And demand isn't going to drop much anyway for in-demand stuff like Apple chips or AI stuff. Best case scenario, they (not TSMC) temporarily eat the cost or spread it around.
This has nothing to do with Trump, it simply doesn't result in competitive local manufacturing. Increasingly rent-seeking AND subsidized, with no pressure to compete.
I think the problem with Intel's foundry is that it cannot produce the same quality and quantity at the level of TSMC.
I was looking through the list of fabrication technology for the latest CPUs, and while they say they are 3nm, it is using TSMCs technology (Arrow Lake S: Fabrication process: Compute Tile (Contains the CPU cores) TSMC's N3B node.)
My guess is that Trump is trying to save Intel by forcing TSMC to buy them under the guise of "I'm forcing companies invest in the US".
If they could no longer sell in the USA than they would no longer have a reason to care about US restrictions on selling chips to other countries. China would be happy to buy many of the chips the US was no longer buying.
“ 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.
Yes it's a tax on consumption and when applied to everything the same way it's essentially a VAT. The admin keeps telling that EU will pay, India will pay but at best they can do is to weaken their currency so the goods become cheeper and it compensates for the tariffs US importers pay.
Arguably, US consumers are super consumers and maybe it will be better for everyone if Americans consume a bit less? I don't think that it should be necessarily bad for business, maybe it's time to switch to world building instead of consuming, maybe as so many people works so hard we as species should gradually move on to use our output for longer and enrich our lives with each new tool instead of consume more and more and keep working the same or more. Eastern Europeans are or used to be a bit likte that, have a slow paced life, have low GDP output, on paper economy and everything is bad but actually have a great life if you have a house with a garden and some stuff you bought 30 years ago and still functioning good enough.
There's no problem with having a trade deficit against one country. There's no need to balance each country, just as there's no need for people to have no imbalance in daily exchanges. It's as if you were going back to a barter economy where there was no money.
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
> 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.
Different countries have different considerations.
Most of these "deals" aren't deals and rather frameworks. And given the tumultuous nature of bilateral trade where countries might not follow on their promises. Happens all the time and countries end up arguing at the WTO. So, it is hard to say whether Europe or Japan "blinked". Given the timing of the European deal it might be to help Trump so that he does not have egg on his face for not having 200 deals by 1st August.
India wants to cozy up to US and was one of the first countries to start trade negotiation. Trump-Modi dynamic has been good. The sticking point is agriculture and dairy. Both countries subsidize agriculture and diary. And in both countries farmers form a big chunk of politically aware voters. For the Indian government it is political suicide to even nod along like Japan and Europe. But if you hear Trump he keeps saying it is about Russian oil.
Brazil might have the same issue. Historically, US was the largest soyabeans exporter. But last time Trump got into a trade war with China, the country has moved away from US exports and started buying from China. So, again even the appearance of a deal might be problematic for the government.
And reading this side by side, maybe US farmers are not that economically aware?
India's issues with the US are for completely separate reason.
Bihar elections are coming up in 2 months [2]. Any incumbent government in India can't give trade concessions on agriculture during peak campaigning season in a swing state that can impact elections in 2-3 additional states as well as the general election in 4 years.
The main Indian exports to the US (pharma, electronics, and services) are all tariff exempted so the economic pain is marginal.
The only export that's hurt is textiles, but frankly, textile workers don't matter in Indian elections, especially when most of them leave for 3-4 months each year to work on the family farm and get social benefits based on their agrarian status and voter rolls that they never updated.
Realistically, India and US will sign a deal either after the Bihar elections, or after making ag/dairy a separate track from the rest of the deal.
Trump needs to keep the cheeseheads of Wisconsin happy just like the NDA needs to keep Bihari farmers happy through direct subsidizes [0] and hardline agriculture policies [1], hence why both the US and India will maintain maximalist positions on agriculture and dairy.
My hunch is a comprehensive deal will be announced during the election media blackout in the run-up of the Bihar elections or shortly after the election.
> ... American consumers will end up paying the tariffs
This has always been the case. I have never heard of a company absorbing tariffs on behalf of consumers in the day and age of "trickle down economics".
These tariffs are presented as trying to bolster domestic industry but that's a smokescreen. The primary goal is to use this to replace income taxes so the rich are freed from their onerous (/s) taxation.
The bonus is that it's a tool for punishing perceived enemies and inciting interested parties to purchase favor from the regime to try and ease them back.
It occurred to me that tariffs are really a backdoor way of introducing consumption tax (aka sales tax, VAT, etc). It has been a conservative policy goal for many years, as the conservatives believe that income tax penalizes entrepreneurship, but the politics make it virtually impossible to switch to because consumption tax is regressive, and it is a huge change. The tariffs debate and the general political atmosphere created a misdirection, resulting in both income and consumption tax being with us now.
The next development will be the politicians discovering to their horror the high levels of taxation, and abolishing the income tax. Brilliant!
The baseline of no trade deficit between all countries and the US makes no sense, since countries are not uniform in resource or production. eg Lesotho/Bangladesh won't achieve a trade balance with the US when they produce what the US wants and don't consume enough to balance it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah9SrbCB7-k&t=1147s
Let's say this was the starting point. Almost immediately, this strategy of trade balance was dispensed with, leaving most countries with some random tariff rate that wasn't strategically decided.
Many recognizable countries, specifically the ones that the administration targeted for political reasons, ended up with adjusted tariffs based on politic. This was due to the administration figuring out they had overstepped or thought that they were too soft, when the influence wasn't effective. When it became clear the economics were being ignored, Trump called them some epithet that meant "unreasonable" and abandoned the tariff tactic in all but rhetoric.
What was the point? The most predictable sequence of IMMEDIATE events were likely the point. I believe the point was to try to convert the global crises (political, economic, and social) that existed around the world to purely economic concerns for simplicity. This was paired with jamming up the entire global trade system, which would allow the administration to listen for the squeakiest wheels. It was supposed to be an efficient way to prioritize immediate problems such that the administration would not have to learn about and weigh all the problems in the world.
Short and long term, the tariffs have accelerated the de-dollarization of the world economy, they has amplified income inequality, and have destroyed supply chains across multiple sectors. The replacements are necessarily less efficient (value is cannibalized by tariffs). It was a lazy and poorly considerer tactic, but it might have achieved the goal, given my assumption of purpose.
The issues that were raised to the administration were largely, left unsolved. The most prominent of which are the Ukrainian, Taiwanese, and Palestinian fronts and the weakening of the US hegemony due to trade conflicts. The good trade relations with traditionally friendly nations have been damaged, long term. Canada, India, China, most of the EU have made moves to distance themselves from the US chaos. Some strange side effects, like this weird buy in to american companies is a side effect of the show, rather than a specific intent. I can concede it wasn't all bad. The US did see some new corporate inroads into a few countries. Notably concessions from Mexico, who was willing to meet the US goals in achieving a trade balance (more or less).
Overall, it's possible the tariffs succeeded as a self-serving tool of the administration, but failed in serving the US as policy. Maybe I'm just wrong, but maybe Trump is just this simple minded and his administration is playing into the fallout, as it advances their 2025 goals (or whatever).
Why would this post be flagged? It could of course just be automatic due to disingenuous flagging by users, but any administrator could see there is no reason to flag this and then unflag it afterwards.
It actually wouldn't. The sale price will be pretty close to the current market price, maybe %10 more. If the Government kicks in funds to underwrite the deal (say a loan to TSMC) then the deal would likely happen exactly at market price.
That means investors who sell are getting the current low market price or a little bit higher--- they will still be down the massive amount.
This is really bailing out current management-- letting them be replaced by the more capable TSMC people and getting an attaboy for helping the US government strengthen the alliance with Taiwan, keeping peace in the region.
> This is really bailing out current management-- letting them be replaced by the more capable TSMC people
The trouble with a competent organization buying a decadent organization is that leadership at the decadent organization is often much better at winning political infighting (they have a lot of practice).
So it’s very easy to end up in a situation where the disfunction metastases up into the parent.
At the very least, executive attention is finite and splitting attention like this is distracting to the parent executives, which harms the parent organization.
Would they buy existing shares from investors? Would they really find enough investors willing to sell shares at market price? I doubt it. There would be a lot of investors that would rather hold than sell at market price. Market price is the current minimum price an investor is willing to accept. Not the price that all investors are willing to accept.
Would they buy new shares issued by Intel? That seems more likely to me. That would be a bailout to Intel.
This is like an old fashioned Civilization game trade. Taiwan gets a significant ownership in a blue chip US company, TSMC should then take %51 control over intel, and turn it around. The US gets a stronger position with China such that china attacking Taiwan would be like bombing Apple or Google. The USA will go to war over that.
Only the willingness to go to war, stops aggressors. War is terrible and economic competition is the path to peace, but if you can't defend yourself you will get destroyed.
Only the willingness to go to war, stops aggressors.
I'm pretty sure that's why China is saber-rattling so openly. I don't endorse the CCP's arguments for Taiwan being part of China (which rest on a very flimsy historical foundation and are mostly tied to the ROC government fleeing there), but I fully understand their dislike of being militarily encircled by the US. Other Asian nations appreciate the status quo under a Pax Americana, but have made it clear that they are less than enthusiastic about participation alongside the US in any military conflict centered on Taiwan.
The US has been defending Taiwan since before integrated circuits were invented. Supporting an ally and a democracy in a critical location is the only reason that matters.
That doesn’t matter much to this administration, but it’s not like they’re going to care about TSMC either.
It seems like they're asking the wrong company to take a stake in Intel. It would make more sense to try to get companies like Apple & Nvidia to take stakes in Nvidia - US based companies that need the product that Intel can supply.
It’s a security deal. They are asking the Taiwan government to trade cutting edge semiconductor manufacturing for defense against invasion. You might call it a racket in other contexts. TSMC is already considered national security infrastructure under Taiwanese law.
Honestly AMD makes the most sense, given they sold off the foundry stuff years ago, which is the part of the process Intel will be doing next.
The board brought on a chop shop guy, you don't do that when there is a future, and TSMC would be smart to wait Intel out and pick it up cheap. The USA wouldn't last a month without TSMC chips, Tim Apple wouldn't let that happen. There is no way this demand has any teeth
I don't get it. Isn't it like forcing the foreign competitor into buying your only chicken that produces golden eggs. I really don't understand the logic behind this.
Just spitballing - maybe if TSMC had a 49% stake in Intel they'd be incentivised to transfer their chip-making technologies and techniques to Intel, to maximise the value of their (forced) investment?
Fortunately for TSMC, Intel really isn’t worth that much anymore. $50B doesn’t seem so bad, and maybe it could lead to a deep partnership and sharing of tech and factories.
I'm not sure anyone but Intel is against that. Both US parties are most likely furious that the CHIPS act was a massive waste of money. TSMC would love to outright buy a massive US presence with valuable IP. The US desperately needs Intel to turn things around to remain a strategic advantage. Only Intel in their cesspool of hubris would want to keep the status quo of mediocrity.
But TSMC, please please please, get Intel out of Oregon. I'm so tired of that loser state holding back companies from reaching their true potential.
Readit News
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 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 some natural state that's unrecoverable. The people you describe have been given a highly addictive media environment tailor made to engender outrage and drive behavior. It shouldn't be a shock when most people cannot resist it. The first step to changing it is not writing them off or insulting them for being had.
Deleted Comment
yeah, it sucks that I can’t buy a JetKVM right now. otoh being dependent on (often) adversarial nations for everything we buy is also not ideal.
So basically the US government was able to take a slice of the profit from everyone but the consumer.
Seems pretty smart to me?
The other effect is to reduce international trade and the kind of national interdependency that creates, and so makes, large scale war highly unlikely.
The US is also trying to use it's economic power to force people to choose sides ( cf secondary sanctions on India ).
So while Trump might be anti-forever wars he is busy creating a world where WWIII is much more likely.
Buying half of Intel isn't going to change anything
Wouldn't that just mean that Taiwan has to choose between two villains, and China can take the advantage of this by changing its narrative and taking the position as a hero, protecting Taiwan from the US.
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.
Trade deficits in isolation aren't good or bad but because the US has the world reserve currency it must supply it's currency to the world.
This basically forces it to have a trade deficit with everyone which over time can hollow out manufacturing sectors. Making the whole economy vulnerable to shocks and ultimately causing it to fail.
It's similar to "Dutch disease," where external demand overvalues the currency and harms tradable sectors.
It's not sustainable without careful policy management, and attempts to weaken the currency via tariffs, devaluation, or some other mechanism.
You might not like Trump or his approach but he is directionally correct and does have a powerful bargaining chip (access to the US market - which is basically on track to be the only 1st world consumer driven economy 5 years from now).
To the same extent that other forms of taxation make sense. I wish people had this same sudden interest in protecting the free market and maximizing trade when we're taking about income tax or sales tax or property tax, etc.
I am not American, nor am I Chinese. Both of those countries have the capability to make enough compute to do whatever the hell they want. I am, however, European...
Government's shouldn't put up with monopolies either, if it wasn't for trump's political baggage, HN would be all over this I'm sure, TSMC is already investing on US factories which even without purchasing a share of intel, it would force them to use those factories and bring them online sooner. We've had multiple unfortunate wars due to dependence on foreign resources that don't have good/sufficient competition state-side, that is not a good pattern to repeat.
If TSMC doesn't blink, maybe they'll get their way for now but all their American projects and in general doing business in the US will be unpleasant and costly until 2028+. Which is cheaper? I don't know, I'm asking because a lot of opinion on the subject isn't talking/explaining about the actual numbers and nuanced economic considerations.
Companies (like Nvidia) will just raise prices and if demand drops they will divert more of it to countries like China and EU. And demand isn't going to drop much anyway for in-demand stuff like Apple chips or AI stuff. Best case scenario, they (not TSMC) temporarily eat the cost or spread it around.
This has nothing to do with Trump, it simply doesn't result in competitive local manufacturing. Increasingly rent-seeking AND subsidized, with no pressure to compete.
I was looking through the list of fabrication technology for the latest CPUs, and while they say they are 3nm, it is using TSMCs technology (Arrow Lake S: Fabrication process: Compute Tile (Contains the CPU cores) TSMC's N3B node.)
My guess is that Trump is trying to save Intel by forcing TSMC to buy them under the guise of "I'm forcing companies invest in the US".
Isn’t that basically “stop buying high technology” to a large degree?
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.
AMD and Apple offer that; Intel still(?) does not.
Arguably, US consumers are super consumers and maybe it will be better for everyone if Americans consume a bit less? I don't think that it should be necessarily bad for business, maybe it's time to switch to world building instead of consuming, maybe as so many people works so hard we as species should gradually move on to use our output for longer and enrich our lives with each new tool instead of consume more and more and keep working the same or more. Eastern Europeans are or used to be a bit likte that, have a slow paced life, have low GDP output, on paper economy and everything is bad but actually have a great life if you have a house with a garden and some stuff you bought 30 years ago and still functioning good enough.
What exactly does this acomplish?
when you take a step back and look at the deal breakdown, this is protection money not a trade negotiation.
Most of these "deals" aren't deals and rather frameworks. And given the tumultuous nature of bilateral trade where countries might not follow on their promises. Happens all the time and countries end up arguing at the WTO. So, it is hard to say whether Europe or Japan "blinked". Given the timing of the European deal it might be to help Trump so that he does not have egg on his face for not having 200 deals by 1st August.
India wants to cozy up to US and was one of the first countries to start trade negotiation. Trump-Modi dynamic has been good. The sticking point is agriculture and dairy. Both countries subsidize agriculture and diary. And in both countries farmers form a big chunk of politically aware voters. For the Indian government it is political suicide to even nod along like Japan and Europe. But if you hear Trump he keeps saying it is about Russian oil.
Brazil might have the same issue. Historically, US was the largest soyabeans exporter. But last time Trump got into a trade war with China, the country has moved away from US exports and started buying from China. So, again even the appearance of a deal might be problematic for the government.
And reading this side by side, maybe US farmers are not that economically aware?
India's issues with the US are for completely separate reason.
Bihar elections are coming up in 2 months [2]. Any incumbent government in India can't give trade concessions on agriculture during peak campaigning season in a swing state that can impact elections in 2-3 additional states as well as the general election in 4 years.
The main Indian exports to the US (pharma, electronics, and services) are all tariff exempted so the economic pain is marginal.
The only export that's hurt is textiles, but frankly, textile workers don't matter in Indian elections, especially when most of them leave for 3-4 months each year to work on the family farm and get social benefits based on their agrarian status and voter rolls that they never updated.
Realistically, India and US will sign a deal either after the Bihar elections, or after making ag/dairy a separate track from the rest of the deal.
Trump needs to keep the cheeseheads of Wisconsin happy just like the NDA needs to keep Bihari farmers happy through direct subsidizes [0] and hardline agriculture policies [1], hence why both the US and India will maintain maximalist positions on agriculture and dairy.
My hunch is a comprehensive deal will be announced during the election media blackout in the run-up of the Bihar elections or shortly after the election.
[0] - https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/prime-minister-narend...
[1] - https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/why-makhan...
[2] - https://www.eci.gov.in/election-symbol-details/2066
This has always been the case. I have never heard of a company absorbing tariffs on behalf of consumers in the day and age of "trickle down economics".
https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/1951851958559703117
Even making them visible has drawn the ire of Trump a few times already.
But I generally agree that it can't go on forever / not how it works historically.
These arm-twisting games are exhausting and expensive.
The bonus is that it's a tool for punishing perceived enemies and inciting interested parties to purchase favor from the regime to try and ease them back.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/28/business/taxes-trump-tariffs
Deleted Comment
Yes.
> Obviously that is impossible
I assume you're willing to short Intel at this point?
Let's say this was the starting point. Almost immediately, this strategy of trade balance was dispensed with, leaving most countries with some random tariff rate that wasn't strategically decided.
Many recognizable countries, specifically the ones that the administration targeted for political reasons, ended up with adjusted tariffs based on politic. This was due to the administration figuring out they had overstepped or thought that they were too soft, when the influence wasn't effective. When it became clear the economics were being ignored, Trump called them some epithet that meant "unreasonable" and abandoned the tariff tactic in all but rhetoric.
What was the point? The most predictable sequence of IMMEDIATE events were likely the point. I believe the point was to try to convert the global crises (political, economic, and social) that existed around the world to purely economic concerns for simplicity. This was paired with jamming up the entire global trade system, which would allow the administration to listen for the squeakiest wheels. It was supposed to be an efficient way to prioritize immediate problems such that the administration would not have to learn about and weigh all the problems in the world.
Short and long term, the tariffs have accelerated the de-dollarization of the world economy, they has amplified income inequality, and have destroyed supply chains across multiple sectors. The replacements are necessarily less efficient (value is cannibalized by tariffs). It was a lazy and poorly considerer tactic, but it might have achieved the goal, given my assumption of purpose.
The issues that were raised to the administration were largely, left unsolved. The most prominent of which are the Ukrainian, Taiwanese, and Palestinian fronts and the weakening of the US hegemony due to trade conflicts. The good trade relations with traditionally friendly nations have been damaged, long term. Canada, India, China, most of the EU have made moves to distance themselves from the US chaos. Some strange side effects, like this weird buy in to american companies is a side effect of the show, rather than a specific intent. I can concede it wasn't all bad. The US did see some new corporate inroads into a few countries. Notably concessions from Mexico, who was willing to meet the US goals in achieving a trade balance (more or less).
Overall, it's possible the tariffs succeeded as a self-serving tool of the administration, but failed in serving the US as policy. Maybe I'm just wrong, but maybe Trump is just this simple minded and his administration is playing into the fallout, as it advances their 2025 goals (or whatever).
Why do you think that? Trump clearly wants them to use Intel's 18A which is likely similar to TSMC 2 year old N3P, which is not an impossible option.
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/intels-new-...
Deleted Comment
That means investors who sell are getting the current low market price or a little bit higher--- they will still be down the massive amount.
This is really bailing out current management-- letting them be replaced by the more capable TSMC people and getting an attaboy for helping the US government strengthen the alliance with Taiwan, keeping peace in the region.
The trouble with a competent organization buying a decadent organization is that leadership at the decadent organization is often much better at winning political infighting (they have a lot of practice).
So it’s very easy to end up in a situation where the disfunction metastases up into the parent.
At the very least, executive attention is finite and splitting attention like this is distracting to the parent executives, which harms the parent organization.
Would they buy existing shares from investors? Would they really find enough investors willing to sell shares at market price? I doubt it. There would be a lot of investors that would rather hold than sell at market price. Market price is the current minimum price an investor is willing to accept. Not the price that all investors are willing to accept.
Would they buy new shares issued by Intel? That seems more likely to me. That would be a bailout to Intel.
If you need taxpayers to make a deal happen, then it is not happening at market price, by definition.
Only the willingness to go to war, stops aggressors. War is terrible and economic competition is the path to peace, but if you can't defend yourself you will get destroyed.
I'm pretty sure that's why China is saber-rattling so openly. I don't endorse the CCP's arguments for Taiwan being part of China (which rest on a very flimsy historical foundation and are mostly tied to the ROC government fleeing there), but I fully understand their dislike of being militarily encircled by the US. Other Asian nations appreciate the status quo under a Pax Americana, but have made it clear that they are less than enthusiastic about participation alongside the US in any military conflict centered on Taiwan.
If TSMC has effectively transferred their technology to Intel, doesn't this remove a reason for the US to defend Taiwan?
That doesn’t matter much to this administration, but it’s not like they’re going to care about TSMC either.
Dead Comment
Blue chip, Intel is not:
> "[...] known for its stability, consistent earnings, sound financials, and long-standing reputation." [0]
[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bluechip.asp
Apparently they don't need that kind of headache.
The board brought on a chop shop guy, you don't do that when there is a future, and TSMC would be smart to wait Intel out and pick it up cheap. The USA wouldn't last a month without TSMC chips, Tim Apple wouldn't let that happen. There is no way this demand has any teeth
Because even if TSMC managed to get that initial deal, they'd still be at risk of Trump revisiting it.
But TSMC, please please please, get Intel out of Oregon. I'm so tired of that loser state holding back companies from reaching their true potential.