On the day that the Administration targeted Apple for being a monopoly in smartphones (which it isn’t really), same Administration rolls out the big bucks for Intel

Intel granted nearly $20 billion to boost US chip output | REUTERS

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Intel has faltered for sure.

But this move, like with the lawsuit against Apple, is purely politics by Biden.

Apple is rich, and therefor bad, so sue it.

Intel can open plants in OH and AZ… which turn into jobs there… which turns into Electoral College votes.

Intel fell behind TMSC in part due to Intel being too bought into its own product line.

It insisted for so long on the x86 products that it didn’t invest enough in other product categories.

Meanwhile, TMSC had Apple (and Nvidia) as loyal customers willing to spend billions on TMSC.

TMSC had no loyalty to legacy products - they just wanted to make Apple and Nvidia happy.

And therein lay the lesson.

All of this strikes me as a rerun of the late 1970’s and early 80’s, when American automobile manufacturers were clearly going to get clobbered by the Japanese.

At that time the fact that the US gov’t was going to save Chrysler was seen as some big change of how the US government should work in the free market.

Today, Biden throws $20B at Intel and hardly anyone notices.

As noted in the video, the US used to be a leader in semiconductor manufacturing. Back in the day, not just Intel (who really were pioneers), but Motorola and Texas Instruments were important, among others.

But in the past few decades the industry is mostly centered on Taiwan, and other east Asian countries.

The TSMC plant in Arizona was supposed to have Apple as an important customer. But the AZ plant ran into issues when TSMC planned to bring over many people from Taiwan to work in said plant, too many for some US politicians.

AFAIK, the plant is still supposed to be a thing that is going to happen, regardless of the above faux pas.

Economic nationalism is the playbook of populists, and Trump isn’t the only one playing from that book.