“The only thing scarier than a break with China is a break from Taiwan토토사이트.”
Recently, “breaking away from Taiwan” has been on the minds of the world’s big tech companies, and the prospect of paying a steep price for doing so has emerged. “Separating from China was expensive enough, but cutting off Taiwan would be even more so,” the Financial Times (FT) reported on the 1st (local time), “and it is doubtful that many companies would be prepared to pay the price.”
One of the triggers for companies to consider reducing ties with Taiwan was a visit by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the island in August last year. As China has responded with military exercises to blockade the island, Western companies have felt compelled to reorganise their supply chains to reduce their reliance on Taiwan. Companies that moved their supply chains from China to Taiwan as a result of the U.S.-China tensions that erupted during Donald Trump’s presidency were soon forced to scale back their Taiwan operations. Since the middle of last year, US big tech companies such as Intel, AMD, Meta, Google, and Amazon have been asking their suppliers to “consider sourcing production capacity outside of China and Taiwan”. HP and Dell have been more specific, reportedly instructing them to “build capacity in Southeast Asia.” Dell is planning to phase out chip production in China within the next year.
“We have business continuity plans (BCPs) in place to prepare for extreme supply chain disruptions such as war,” said an executive at Japanese semiconductor equipment maker Advance Test, “but if there is an actual conflict in the Taiwan Strait, frankly any BCP will be useless.” The U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) estimates that a disruption to Taiwan’s TSMC’s production of non-memory semiconductor chips could cost the world’s electronics manufacturers as much as $500bn (£659bn) in lost revenue. The Rhodium Group, a U.S. research organisation, recently said that “a Taiwan-related dispute would wipe out more than $2 trillion in economic activity in an instant”.