I realise a lot of Americans fail to understand how difficult it is to set up manufacturing plants of various kinds for what was once imported goods; but microprocessors of all God damned things are the singular thing you should make an exception for importing.
That is not an industry that you can slap together with a few lathes and mills and dudes with “can do” attitudes. Those are billion dollar state of the art factories working on products on the microscopic level.
American made electronics are going to be powered by vacuum tubes at this rate and cost 5000x as much.
By props, do you mean irradiated husks and sheeple willing to live in vaults while praising their corporate overlords for allowing them to eat mayonnaise sandwiches while the rest of the world burns? Because... yea, their production costs are probably going to go down. Win! Gonna have to change the genre from dramedy to documentary, but other than that...
The CHIPS act was the one singular act by the Biden administration that would fully align with the isolationist line put down by the cheeto in charge and his cronies, but no. Can't leave a single thing by the guy that defeated you, even if it is 100% in your own interest. The pettiness is astounding.
Not fully align. The manufacturers in the US wouldn't be top of the line the latest greatest most powerful chips. That would stay in Taiwan. If that capacity moved to the US, Taiwan wouldn't be as valuable to the US as an ally and trading partner.
Semiconductors are supposed to be excluded from tarrifs, but they have a powerful tool to make them more expensive for us to offset that 32% tariff.
Not to mention sourcing the rare earth metals that aren't found native to the US soil. Surely we can trade for them, *check notes* from the countries we just tariffed on without any foresight. Oh and also staffing them with technicians with the know-how after gutting future prospective talents from learning the skill in a future position.
I think a lot of people in general (globally) don't understand modern manufacturing costs, requirements and restrictions. I've built a software business adjacent to it, and been around it on and off most of my career and always find people are so surprised what it takes to get something into a customer's hands.
Even with software I am sure customers think we just write down what they want and do the magic to turn it into a product.
In regard to America they don't understand a lot of the expertise is not in the states and people aren't going to go there now to deliver it.
I think a lot of people in general (globally) don't understand modern manufacturing costs, requirements and restrictions.
They don't, at all. I've worked in manufacturing for a while, and was talking to family after the election...... they were genuinely surprised that we couldn't just roll up into an empty building, unbox a few machines, and be pumping out product in a day or so.
If they were kids, I'd assumed their brains had confused Minecraft with reality, but these were good old baby boomers. They have no excuse for being this stupid.
EUV is done by a laser going through a droplet of tin. as per ASML site:
In our laser-produced plasma (LPP) source, molten tin droplets of around 25 microns in diameter are ejected from a generator at 70 meters per second. As they fall, the droplets are hit first by a low-intensity laser pulse that flattens them into a pancake shape. Then a more powerful laser pulse vaporizes the flattened droplet to create a plasma that emits EUV light. To produce enough light to manufacture microchips, this process is repeated 50,000 times every second.
This is also one of the reasons why ASML is still in the Netherlands. Im pretty sure its been tried a lot to entice them to relocate, but pretty much all industry around their facility is dedicated to them, so its not just a matter of just relocating ASML themselves.
Amusingly, the four remaining factories making vacuum tubes in large quantities are in Asia and eastern Europe.
In the U.S., Western Electric makes specialty tubes for military applications and one tube for audio, the 300B. The 300Bs will set you back a cool $750 each.
TMSC tried building a fab in Arizona. They had to stop all work and get Taiwanese workers in because the glorious American worker was unable to build clean rooms as per spec.
We can't even build the building, not to mention building or running the machinery inside.
We need industrial policy (such as the chips act) to slowly reindustialize. Tarifs are a pigeon-brain solution that will 100% fail and have negative repercussions. Just think of it this way - Ford and GM will continue building gas cars with weaker emission controls in a protected market and the rest of the world ever better EVs. Do you think those gas guzzlers will be competitive in world markets? Will export exactly zero of them in 10 years. On the other hand as soon as tarifs drop, modern foreign EVs will eat the market.
In addition to the costs you mention, there is also the question of commitment from the US government's side. Trump has already delayed tariffs on Canada and Mexico several times in the past two months. Should any business devote the time, money, and manpower to start moving manufacturing around when Trump is likely to change his mind in week?
For reference, TSMC Arizona has cost at least $60B to build, will take about seven years to get to maximum capacity from the start, and at peak will employ 2,200 people.
Yes, there's currently 10,000 involved in construction but that's temporary.
For contrast, in the first three months of 2025, the US tech sector has laid off 24,000 workers - a lot of them due to the softening and uncertainty of the economy.
We can't build factories and fabs to get jobs back fast enough to replace those we are losing. America is a service economy and frankly it does better that way, at least for the last 50 years.
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u/Seffyr 1d ago
I realise a lot of Americans fail to understand how difficult it is to set up manufacturing plants of various kinds for what was once imported goods; but microprocessors of all God damned things are the singular thing you should make an exception for importing.
That is not an industry that you can slap together with a few lathes and mills and dudes with “can do” attitudes. Those are billion dollar state of the art factories working on products on the microscopic level.
American made electronics are going to be powered by vacuum tubes at this rate and cost 5000x as much.