Major Apple supplier and chip manufacturer TSMC is weighing a potential expansion in Japan, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Citing unnamed sources, the Journal reported that Japan’s government has signaled it would welcome the Apple supplier to build beyond its initial manufacturing plant in the country, though no decisions have yet been made. The factory currently under construction in Japan is meant to focus on less-advanced chips used in automobiles, for example, but additional capacity could focus on more-advanced technology, the Journal reported.
TSMC isn’t the only tech manufacturer shifting production to areas that may feel a less direct influence from China. Apple said some of the new iPhone 14 would be manufactured by Foxconn in India. Foxconn, which has a large presence in China, also moved some Apple product assembly to Vietnam, Reuters reported in 2020.
MacDailyNews Take: Diversify, diversify, diversify – especially away from CCP-controlled China.
Apple cannot divest their dependence on China quickly enough (because they started years too late). – MacDailyNews. August 17, 2022
Former U.S. President Richard Nixon, who opened relations with China in the early 1970’s, just before his death in 1994 remarked on China: We may have created a Frankenstein.
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Japan actually might make a lot of sense, but I’m curious if they’ve considered Korea as well or not. Both are expensive labor markets, but great infrastructures. I’m not up to date about the infrastructure in Vietnam, but I suspect that there is also an appropriately educated workforce there as well. Samsung is going to start doing some chip work there, so…
But Japan is not a bad idea and their tech industry could definitely use some new blood. I suspect they’d sign a deal to get a lot of those chips in Japanese cars too.
I’m a huge fan and investor in TSMC and wonder when its share price will reflect its true value and importance in the world. You know China is just licking its chopsticks hoping to take a bite.
This diversification move really needs to happen yesterday, and North America needs to prioritize chip production domestically as well, on the basis of economic security if not national security. Politicians need to stop bickering about ideology and do more for the nation when the future looks grey…
“Politicians need to stop bickering about ideology and do more for the nation when the future looks grey…”
Yes, like stop draining the Strategic Oil Reserve in an attempt to stop angry voters from dropping support for the current administration and its failed policies and high energy prices. The SOR has always been for emergencies, especially of a threatening military nature, not a for vote buying by losers.
Amen; just wait until the mid-term elections are behind us—the gasoline prices will shoot upwards without the fake added supply that JoBama has been taking from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The cost per barrel to refill it will be 4 times more expensive than the previous average price. And, until it’s full we’ll be at risk of another OPEC cutoff like what happened in the late 1970s.