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https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/14/taiwan-tech-king-pelosi-powerhouse-microchip-industry-00082646
Taiwan’s Tech King to Nancy Pelosi: U.S. Is in Over Its Head
“Fifty billion dollars – well, that’s a good start,” quipped the 91-year-old Morris Chang, warning that Washington’s new bipartisan
industrial policy may not add up.
Nancy Pelosi, center, is pictured arriving at the Legislative Yuan,
Taiwan's house of parliament.
Nancy Pelosi arrives at the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's house of
parliament, on August 03, 2022 in Taipei, Taiwan. | Annabelle Chih/Getty
Images
By ALEXANDER BURNS
02/14/2023 04:30 AM EST
Alexander Burns is an associate editor for global politics at POLITICO.
His Tomorrow column explores the future of politics and policy debates
that cross national lines.
Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan like a juggernaut. She defied threats
from the Chinese regime in order to visit the island and ignored
American generals who saw the trip as a reckless provocation. Ecstatic
crowds greeted her at the airport and her hotel. Nothing, it seemed,
could slow her down.
And then she met Morris Chang.
Chang, the 91-year-old founder of the chipmaking goliath TSMC, used a
luncheon at Taiwan’s presidential palace to deliver a biting soliloquy
to Pelosi and other visiting American lawmakers about the new industrial
policy emerging in the United States. In comments that have not
previously been reported in detail, Chang took aim at the CHIPS and
Science Act and its $52 billion package of subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing.
Pelosi told me in a recent interview that Chang, an engineer trained at
MIT and Stanford, began with a light remark.
“Fifty billion dollars – well, that’s a good start,” Chang said, according to her recollection.
Four people present for the meeting, including Pelosi, said it quickly
became evident that Chang was not in a kidding mood.
Pelosi arrives in Taiwan
SharePlay Video
With Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, looking on, the billionaire entrepreneur pressed Pelosi with sobering questions about the CHIPS law
— and whether the policy represented a genuine commitment to supporting advanced industry or an impulsive attempt by the United States to seize
a piece of a lucrative global market.
Chang said he was pleased that his company could benefit from the
subsidies; TSMC already had a major development project underway in
Arizona. But did the United States really think it could buy itself a powerhouse chipmaking industry, just like that?
That very question now hangs over the Biden administration as it
prepares to implement the semiconductor spending in the CHIPS and
Science Act. The next phase is due to begin this month with the
unveiling by the Commerce Department of a detailed process for awarding subsidies. The law already looks like a useful political trophy for
Biden, claiming a prominent spot in his State of the Union Address.
The law is an emblem, in Biden’s telling, of his commitment to creating
the jobs of the future and armoring America’s economy against the
disruptions that an increasingly militant China could inflict,
potentially by attacking Taiwan. Pouring subsidies into chip fabrication
would “make sure the supply chain for America begins in America,” Biden told Congress.
That is far from a sure bet. As Chang told Pelosi, there is a long
distance between the cutting of government checks and the creation of a self-sustaining chips industry in the United States.
His candid concerns represent a rough guide to the challenges Biden’s semiconductor policy will have to address if it is to succeed, long
after the immediate political fanfare has abated — and well past the
point that its generous subsidies for big business have run out.
Over lunch, Chang warned that it was terribly naïve of the United States
to think that it could rapidly spend its way into one of the most
complex electronics-manufacturing markets in the world. The task of
making semiconductor chips was almost impossibly complicated, he said, demanding Herculean labors merely to obtain the raw materials involved
and requiring microscopic precision in the construction of fabrication
plants and then in the assembly of the chips themselves.
Was the United States really up to that job?
The industry evolves at incredible speed, Chang continued. Even if the
United States managed to build some high-quality factories with the
spending Pelosi championed, it would have to keep investing more and
more to keep those facilities up to date. Otherwise, he said, Americans
would in short order find themselves with tens of billions of dollars’
worth of outdated hardware. A once-in-a-generation infusion of cash
would not be enough.
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Was America really prepared to keep up?
If the United States wanted a semiconductor industry it could rely on,
Chang said, then it should keep investing in the security of Taiwan.
After all, his company had long ago perfected what Americans were now
trying to devise on their own.
As course upon course of small plates came and went, Chang’s discourse
ran on so long that his wife, Sophie, cut in at one point with a terse interjection; Chang told the group she thought he was talking too much.
Tsai, observing the whole exchange, noted to Pelosi and the other
Americans that Chang had a reputation for always speaking his mind.
Several people described Chang’s remarks on condition of anonymity in
order to discuss a sensitive private meeting. Indeed, the only person
who agreed to speak with me about it on the record was Pelosi. She was
also the only one who sounded untroubled by Chang’s skepticism about the United States as a home for the semiconductor trade.
Biden signs CHIPS and Science bill, boosting semiconductor production
SharePlay Video
“He knows America quite well,” she said, “and the questions he asked I saw almost as an opportunity to respond, even if some of it was
challenging.”
Unlike other people I spoke to, Pelosi said she was not put off by the
severity of Chang’s language. Lauding Chang as an “iconic figure,” she told me several times: “I was in such awe of him.”
But Pelosi said she had also delivered a firm message of her own: “That
we knew what we were doing, that we were determined to succeed with it –
that it was a good start.”
Other Taiwanese executives present voiced hesitation, Pelosi
acknowledged, with some questioning whether American environmental and
labor laws were consistent with the goal of nurturing a sophisticated
industry. In our conversation, she rejected the idea that there might be tensions between her political party’s grand economic and social
aspirations, and the narrower aims of the CHIPS law.
Chang, naturally, is not a disinterested observer of the American
semiconductor effort. His company is a singular global power; its
overwhelming importance in the high-tech supply chain has become a vital strategic asset for Taiwan as it gathers allies in an age of deepening
conflict with the Chinese Communist Party. If China blockaded or invaded
the island, the impact on TSMC’s operations alone would convulse the international economy. That is a strong incentive for wealthy
democracies to defend Taiwan with more than blandishments about self-determination.
Biden says U.S. forces will defend Taiwan if China invades
SharePlay Video
Chang has questioned in other settings whether the United States is a
suitable environment for semiconductor manufacturing, pointing to gaps
in the workforce and defects in the business culture. On a podcast
hosted by the Brookings Institution last year, Chang lamented what he
called a lack of “manufacturing talents” in the United States, owing to generations of ambitious Americans flocking to finance and internet
companies instead. (“I don’t really think it’s a bad thing for the
United States, actually,” he said, “but it’s a bad thing for trying to
do semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.”)
He repeated a version of that critique over lunch in August, prompting
one member of Pelosi’s delegation, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, to speak up
and urge Chang to visit Krishnamoorthi’s home state of Illinois to get a better sense of the American workforce. Chang did not indicate he was
tempted by the invitation.
When I asked several Biden administration officials about Chang’s
criticism, the message I got back was a confident-sounding “stay tuned.” The next stage of CHIPS implementation, they said, would reveal in more
detail how the law would be used to unlock a torrent of private-sector investment and make American semiconductor fabrication a sturdy,
long-range enterprise. They did not reject Chang’s concerns about the
current U.S. workforce, but pointed to American tech hubs like Silicon
Valley and North Carolina’s Research Triangle as evidence that we do
know how to build dynamic, fully staffed tech hubs in this country. Now,
they said, we need to build more of them.
President Joe Biden is pictured speaking at a podium into a microphone
in front of a crowd.
President Joe Biden talks about bringing chip manufacturing jobs to
America after touring the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company
facility in Phoenix on Dec. 6, 2022. | Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo
Not long after his luncheon with Pelosi, Chang visited an area that
figures to become one of those hubs. In Arizona, he joined Biden at a
vast construction site in north Phoenix where TSMC is building a
gargantuan complex that may stand as something of a counterpoint to
Chang’s overarching skepticism about the law. His company mapped out
plans for an Arizona project before Biden became president, but after
the passage of the CHIPS law TSMC announced it would massively increase
its investment in the state — from $12 billion to $40 billion — and
build a second facility there, too.
The final result would be a fabrication center that is expected to
supply Apple and other American tech companies, employing thousands in a
state that also happens to be a major electoral battleground. Not
incidentally, it would likely be eligible for U.S. subsidies.
That, Biden said in December, was more than just a good start. He
declared in Phoenix that the United States was “better positioned than
any other nation to lead the world economy in the years ahead — if we
keep our focus.”
Morris Chang could have told Biden that was a big “if.”
FILED UNDER: WHITE HOUSE, CHINA, JOE BIDEN, JOE BIDEN 2020, NANCY
PELOSI, ARIZONA,
POLITICO
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