Intel -- U.S. government
I understand why many, on both sides of the political spectrum, are concerned about the US Government making a $8.9 billion investment in Intel stock, and taking a 10% ownership interest in Intel. Most of the funds come from money the U.S. government was supposed to pay Intel anyway.
Coming less than a month after Trump had called on the Intel CEO to resign, makes it sound like coercion. Having the government own companies makes me (and I assume a lot of conservatives) queasy. It sounds like socialism.
But setting aside Trump being Trump, this might not be a bad thing for our country. Intel is in trouble. It missed mobile computing (e.g. smartphones) chip making and made other bad business decisions.
TSMC is the largest dedicated independent ("pure-play") semiconductor foundry. Some of its customers are AMD, Apple, ARM, Broadcom, Marvell, MediaTek, Qualcomm, and Nvidia. Actually, even Intel actually outsources some of their production to TSMC. AMD, APPLE, ARM, and Nvidia design chips, and TSMC manufactures them on TSMC "wafers". (I won't go into the details here. It is a bit more complicated than I have stated).
TSMC is an acronym for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited.
Yes, it is a Taiwan company and the bulk of its chip making occurs there.
TSMC has recently built a foundry in Arizona, but most of their high end chips are still made in Taiwan, and the US made chips cost more than those made in Taiwan.
You may have heard that China considers Taiwan to be part of China, and periodically threatens to annex Taiwan.
At this juncture, it would be extremely bad for our country if TSMC were to fall in the hands of mainland China.
If China invaded Taiwan, TSMC could be damaged or destroyed.
Taiwan is also a seismically active zone, although most of the earthquakes have occurred off the coast and have caused little damage. Taiwan did have a major earthquake last year, and an even larger one in 1999 when more than 2,000 people died.
Setting aside China and natural disasters, it is very bad for the U.S. for most of the world’s chips to come from one other country.
For all these reasons, if Trump were not involved, I would whole-heartedly applaud this investment. I am cautiously optimistic this was a wise move, despite who our current president happens to be.