This could actually a much bigger deal than a tariff on foreign chips.
Chips are intermediate goods, never used independently, and the vast majority of PCBs on the planet are made and populated in China, so if China bans the import of a specific chip, you'll have to choose between moving your entire manufacturing operation, or just switching our one chip for another from a Chinese supplier (that's almost certainly also cheaper).
It's also not practically viable to populate PCBs over multiple steps at any amount of quantity, so either you populate the entire PCB in China, or you populate the entire PCB not in China, there's no way to selectively populate just a few chips at a later stage for any meaningful quantity.
The chips on this list like CAN transceivers, digital isolators, gate drivers, etc used in massive quantities in industrial electronics like automotive, EV, drones, aerospace, robotics, industrial control, basically anything bigger than your consumer phone. These chips are all <$10 each but all critical to the device they're used in, which means OEMs has to find an alternative, its extremely easy to find Chinese alternatives, and it's extremely hard for the foreign chipmakers to sustain their production without the option of Chinese assembly.
In other words this move could effectively hard kill entire business divisions for non-Chinese chip makers, and possibly bring down entire companies depend on how much they rely on inndustrial and automotive chip sales. China is the gate keeper between chips and end users, this move is the gate keeper putting up the first filter.
Personally, I hope Western powers continue to feed intel into a sensor saturated environment. Preferably, they pick up the pace and do so with high value assets like carriers.China tracks US, British warships on Taiwan Strait transit
The vessels followed in the wake of China’s latest aircraft carrier and Australian and Canadian ships
Last week it was a Canadian and Australian frigates traversing the TW Strait-sort of a little tantrum from seeing all the weapon systems on Sept 3rd.Can't wait for reunification and closing the damn Strait as an internal waterway.Personally, I hope Western powers continue to feed intel into a sensor saturated environment. Preferably, they pick up the pace and do so with high value assets like carriers.
Peeling back the veil of history, which is written by the victors after all, you'll no doubt find many victories that resulted from shrewdness and being 10 steps ahead of your opponent. But I wouldn't be surprised if the truth turned out being that an overwhelming amount of the world's "victories" just amounted to dumb luck.Maybe it's not that China is really competent. It's just everyone is really stupid.
Even Japan and Korea which are supposed to be smarter developed east asian nations are doing a lot of dumb stuff.
There are really only two political systems in the world: a system that believes people should be equal, and a system that believe people should not be equal.It's always been authoritarian fascist, hiding under the cloak of democracy. More specifically, it is a game of musical chairs between alternating feudal lords who have common interests. Authoritarian fuedal fascist oligarchy. The old monarch was just a higher ranked feudal lord who outcompeted a previously higher ranked feudal lord.
Social mobility among plebs is nonexistent or severely restricted (i.e. you can move up to a certain limit). If the plebs collectively are moving up then situations are created to push them down again. Can't wield power if everyone is equal.
Even before Kirk's assassination Trump said he wanted to reorient the department of defence to tackle America's domestic front rather than geopolitics. Kirk's death provided the perfect cassus belli to turbocharge that plan and just now Goebbels 2.0 without the charisma features, ie. Stephen Miller, confirmed it.
@gelgoog
@Racek49
An old thread discussing why the Soviet Union collapsed
China's Greatest Fear: Dead and Buried Like the Soviet Union (Closed)
An interesting article from the National Interest on China's views of the USSR http://nationalinterest.org/blog/chinas-greatest-fear-dead-buried-the-soviet-union-15477 But here's my view. Starting in the 1970s, the studies show that the Soviet economy became less productive and efficient as...www.sinodefenceforum.com