I don't think illegal price fixing is the only thing to worry about if China comes to dominate the business.

better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

China was the largest buyer of ASML systems last quarter, or about 45+%. DRAMs don't need EUV (yet?)

The first three dominate 95+% of the market.

too bad that there is nothing to steal from modern China.

I see what you did there. LOL

Samsung closed the last Chinese smartphone factory in 2019 and moved South to Vietnam. In 2020, Samsung's Vietnam production accounted for about 25+% of the country's GDP and export.

This was mostly in the 80's during the cold war.

IMO, and it's not even really clear how Samsung's DRAM business really benefited from the state backing. The South Korea gov't first major initiative "Semiconductor Industry Promotion Plan" started only after Samsung'd developed their first 64K DRAM in 1983. It really helped other local industry competitors such as LG and Hyundai catch up, but Samsung was already on a roll -- by the early 90's, the company became the first to develop 256Mb DRAM. Not clear whether they really needed hand-holding from the gov't.

why? Xi already made his intention with Taiwan clear many years ago. Besides, Xi, while pretending to be neutral, has become the major backer of Putin's war effort. It's not like Trump is doing anything special.

>> There is ZERO concern of the current US administration about the welfare of Venezuelans,

I don't think this was a humanitarian mission. I'm speculating from Trump's perspective, Maduro was a major de-stabilizing factor. The Western world also seems to tacitly agree that the man had to go -- I don't think Maria Machado's recent Nobel Peace Prize was coincidence.

>> They now make a product that it turns out people want (reliable/economy)

Sure, Ford has always made cars that their customers want, F-150 for instance, the best selling vehicle in the US for an unbroken streak of nearly 50 years, during which it continued to improve and maintain its popularity. The Chicken law has done wonders for the American automakers.

>> ... the focus on long term reliability.

Sure, I don't question the Japanese automakers' reliability, but, in the cheap, small vehicle segments they compete with the Japanese import, the American automakers are now more or less wiped out. Most small, affordable vehicles from GM and Ford are now made in either Mexico or South Korea. So where is their "competitiveness" that otherwise wouldn't exist without the Japanese imports? In other word, the Japanese imports clearly did not prevent the "loss of competitiveness in the future."

>> Rent seeking is industry suicide.

If it's as bad as you say it is, why turn a blind to China's rent seeking past 15 years and promote their industry, which again benefited tremendously from forced JV, forced tech transfer, restrictive market access/licensing, local content/sourcing/production, high-tariffs, shadow-banning foreign competitors, arbitrary regulatory/safety barriers, etc?

I think we can glean a lot of lesson from the Chicken Tax past 60+ years and China's rent-seeking policies in the EV business past 15 years. We know what works and what doesn't -- and BYD is not it.