alt Hacker NewsThe biggest problem with the tariff policy is not the cost or even the uncertainty, it's the corruption. A single person should not have the power to dictate the terms of trade, because the rational play in such a system is for businesses that rely on trade to pander to that person, and that's corrupt.
Replies
Exactly — this is CHIPS Act logic, not tariff logic. But the uncomfortable reality is that even with massive subsidies, reshoring mid-node RF components is very different from leading-edge fabs. Broadcom's FBAR filters are important but they're not the bottleneck. The real choke point remains leading-edge lithography equipment and the talent pipeline. Having watched Asia's semiconductor ecosystem up close, the US can throw money at fabs but replicating the dense supplier networks around Hsinchu or Suzhou takes decades, not election cycles. Apple's announcement is smart PR, but it's incremental capacity, not a structural shift.
It is useful for the president to have emergency powers. However he should have been impeached for abusing emergency powers in a non-emergency. Same for his invasion of Iran - Iran has been building long enough that he had plenty of time to go to Congress for permission if he thought attacks were needed.