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.
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.
235
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.