TAIPEI, Taiwan : The founder of chip manufacturer TSMC, Morris Chang, said he supports the efforts of the US to slow China's advances in the semiconductor industry.
He stressed that prices would increase and the availability of a wide variety of chips that power the modern world will decline due to the bifurcation of the global supply chain and the reversal of globalization.
Chang said at an event hosted by Taiwan's CommonWealth Magazine, there was no question in my mind that globalization is dead. Free trade is not quite that dead, but it is in danger. The pervasiveness of chips will stop or slow down when the costs go up. He said that we are going to be in a different game.
Asia's most valuable listed company and a major Apple supplier, TSMC is widely regarded in Taiwan as the sacred mountain protecting the country due to its economic importance.
In recent years, China has applied more diplomatic and military pressure on Taiwan, which Beijing views as its territory.
At the same time, Taipei is in a predicament regarding the US efforts to boost chip manufacturing locally or in allied countries.
In 2022 TSMC began the construction of a second chip factory in Arizona that uses advanced technology, which will begin production in 2026, bringing it total investment in the US to $40 billion.
The Chinese government invested billions in the country's chip sector, but Chang said that China's chip manufacturing technology lags behind that of Taiwan by at least five or six years.