People like Musk rarely take into account the overall impact of this sort of tariff in the international chain.

I’ll give you an example. I live in Latin America. My processor is AMD, so made in USA with Taiwanese semiconductors.

But let’s pretend that I were to upgrade my processor today. AMD gets 25% tariffs over Taiwanese semiconductors, but it won’t “eat” the tariff, it simply relays it to the customers. So I’d pay more for the processor.

Would I? Fuck no. I’ve run a potato computer for years, might as well do it in the future. If some Taiwanese, Chinese or European alternative pops up, less unreasonably priced, I’d be willing to buy it. Taiwan still profits, so does the local market, but instead of a chunk of my money going to USA, it would go to one of those three.

Except that I’m not the only one. Others would do the same as me. Slow but sure and cumulatively, international trade swaps the middlemen in USA with middlemen elsewhere.

AMD is getting less sales, thus less profits. Investors hate it. Why bother investing in USA? They’ll invest in a booming tariff-free alternative. Vulture capital flies away in a flock, once the carcass is gone.

And it is not just CPUs; it’s also GPUs and everything else electronics. And it is not just AMD, but Intel and every other business relying on Taiwanese microchips.

With less money entering USA, the local customer market is slightly poorer. Now there’s less pressure to attend that market. In those situations, is it worth for AMD to keep itself in USA? Rename itself to “IMD”, set up base in Ireland, boom, done.

Musk is sinking the economy of his own banana republic maize dictatorship. And it’s getting amusing to see.

[And in case anyone is wondering why I’m saying “Musk” instead of “Trump”, it’s because I genuinely believe that the later is there because the former wants it, not the opposite. Trump is that sort of tiny useful idiot, easy to control, just call him “who’s a good boy? strong man? Yes, you are, Trump! Good boy! Strong man!” and he’ll bark in the desired direction.]

The untied states doesn’t really have a semiconductor industry. We shipped it all off to China and Taiwan and these fabs take an enormous amount of time and money to get running. All this will do is skyrocket prices

Ok so he’s threatening people who have the advantage with…something? I mean they could just as easily go “no, we’re good” and then the US would have neither chips nor factories.

If he’s hoping to have that technology here so the US can steal it, well obviously that’s crazy and these companies have already considered that.

And even if he was going to be nice to them that’s kinda wild that Mr. Super-racist would be so ok with using American labour to enrich foreign executives.

Is “the Art of the Deal” about how you can put yourself in absolutely awful bargaining positions while begging for others to do your job for you? ‘Cause he’s excellent at that.

swallow the load, tech bros

Is this also on stuff made with the semiconductors? What’s stopping the companies from moving assembly out the US as well?