Comment by phantomathkg
4 days ago
Selling the secret sauce to US definitely make Taiwan disposable. But I also bet TSMC doesn't have a choice as whoever in power in US can also impose sanction/tariff or whatever they can to make TSMC to compile.
4 days ago
Selling the secret sauce to US definitely make Taiwan disposable. But I also bet TSMC doesn't have a choice as whoever in power in US can also impose sanction/tariff or whatever they can to make TSMC to compile.
TSMC is a publicly traded company and like all publicly traded companies it has no allegiance to any country (other than historical legacy and emotions) and will always relocate to where it's most safe and profitable for providing returns to its shareholders, just like how many profitable companies moved to UK, US and Switzerland during WW2 and how many EU companies are doing the same thing today.
If the US will provide TSMC with better deals on all fronts than what the Taiwanese government can, then there's nothing that can stop them from slowly abandoning Taiwan and moving the HQ and vital operations to the US over time, especially that the Taiwanese government is not a major shareholder in TSMC.
Companies don't magically not have any humans in them as soon as they are on a stock market.
How does this invalidate what I said?
Have you heard of Operation Paperclip? The moment China steps in Taiwan, all those vital TSMC engineers will be flown to the US along with the critical IP and given a blank cheque to replicate Taiwan operation on US soil ASAP. TSMC is preemptively building the infrastructure there in preparation for such an event, so it can outlive whatever happens to Taiwan. TSMC has little inventive to tie itself to Taiwan and its people who are not its employees. Every big company thinks and acts like this. Taiwan can't force TSMC to stay there if it doesn't want to.
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It's about as close as you can get though to capital efficiently allocating itself
In the game betwen China and the US, the legal status and 'allegiance' of TSMC is not relevant. What is relevant is who controls the fabs, i.e. where the fabs are physically located.
It is also naive to think that governments (US and especially ROC/Taiwan) do not have influence over TSMC. This sort of thing is not necessarily measured by level of shareholding.