The idea behind tariffs is to increase domestic manufacturing, but Almassy notes the United Stated doesn’t have the manufacturing capacity or capability that Taiwan does. TSMC, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries have some fabs here but they are not building the most leading edge technologies.
“Those are all in Taiwan at the moment. Those fabs take years to ramp up right. And then you need the workforce to be able to turn them into profitable factories. It doesn’t have that doesn’t happen overnight either,” he said.
Almassy said it’s not possible to predict when the tariffs will hit because they haven’t been implemented yet. “The magnitude of it remains to be seen, based on the duration and the overall macro connection and how things play out more broadly,” he said.
Still, others say tariffs would harm the industry. “The tech industry is a global industry, and as we saw during Trump’s first term, if you place restrictions on any part of the value chain, you impact the entire value chain in one way or another. Between Trump’s threats and [Xi Jinping, China’s president] threats [referring to the restriction of rare earth materials], the tech industry could be in for a very rough ride, not to mention the US and global economies,” said Jim McGregor, principal analyst with Tirias Research said in a recent Network World article
