I was recently chatting with someone in that industry but not at TSMC. It's that they assumed Taiwanese workplace, cultural, government, and business norms will work here. There's chip manufacturing in the US, so it's not that it can't work. It just won't be the same as Taiwan.
You can re-write your exact same response but replace TSMC with Toyota. When Toyota started to build plants in 90s, people said much the same. In the beginning, yes, there were huge cultural gaps and major issues. Over time, they were fixed. I expect the same for TSMC.
Not OP, but: TSMC has tried before. The workforce is not educated properly and the workplace cultures are vastly different. In this case, the US workers were used to stronger labor protections than their Taiwanese counterparts.
The US has multiple fabs and has multiple more being built right now. This is just the propaganda of the elite class who sold off our industrial base and you’re repeating it verbatim
This is exactly right. Onshoring fabs back to the US is part of a long term political and economic strategic plan to counter China called The Clean Network / The "5G trifecta" — TSMC's new fab in Arizona will be the largest onshoring in American history.
Every year it becomes harder to justify hiring a Westerner from a business perspective. America in 50 years will look like Argentina, full of mediocre workers that demand empire era wages. If we wanna change that, we need to work on developing global monopolies and crushing our enemies. Won't happen though, we'll just wither away wondering why our economy is wasting away.
Why didn't this happen in Germany and Japan? Both were born as manuf'ing giants and remain as giants. Compared to many neighboring countries, their labour costs are very high. Yet, they continue to manuf a huge amount of good for domestic consumption and international export. And both countries have very strong labour laws. To an American, it appears almost impossible to fire people in Japan and Germany.
I’ll take this bet and see you in 50 years. The US has surged ahead of the rest of the world in recent years and it’s only just starting to put itself first again.
How? Our industries are being hollowed out. More and more engineering jobs will go to China, Taiwan, Ukraine, Poland, etc. where they are paid half of a westnern's salary and perform nearly as well if not better. This trend will only continue until the U.S is cut out of the equation entirely. Sure we're doing better than Canada, but Canada is the prime example of a country in decline. They won't need to wait 50 years to be Argentina. Same with many other Western countries.
One of them is about five miles from me in Phoenix and it's going poorly. My read is that there are some legitimate labor concerns, some mismanagement, but also a lot of special interest strong arming in things like not bringing in enough Taiwanese workers.
I'm unaware of how automatable fabs are. If the workers are high-cost then the machines need to do more or the government needs to subsidize production.
> This is just the propaganda of the elite class who sold off our industrial base and you’re repeating it verbatim
They’re socializing Americans to get used to a future where their kids have to go to the Middle East and China in search of upwards mobility. (Of course those societies will never be as accommodating of Americans as America has been of Chinese and middle Easterners.)
I have a friend in Taiwan who works as an engineer for an LED manufacturer. He makes about 2K USD a month. I don't think anyone would even clean toilets for that much in the US. US salaries are just not globally competitive.
And yet salaries in the US are sustained. To me it looks like the issue is that while we know how to start companies and have VC capital, we don't know how to outsource well (even with all the local immigrants)
> He makes about 2K USD a month. I don't think anyone would even clean toilets for that much in the US.
Do you mean to say that's low pay or high pay compared to the US?
In the US, 2k USD a month would barely be enough to rent a small apartment, let alone pay for utilities and groceries. You'd be left homeless or starving.
The majority of Americans of all races and genders earn above $15 an hour [0]
Taiwan's average wage (so skewed upwards) was ~$22k a year in 2023 [1]. That was an 8 year high btw - wages have been much lower.
Lots of White Collar Taiwanese would move to Mainland China for that reason - they'd earn similar if not higher salaries in Mainland China AND not pay income tax.
Basically, OP's point is that companies don't optimize for wages alone (and I can attest to that having hired abroad, and helped move the operations of a former employer to Israel+India from the US).
Even TSMC's founder admitted that:
On a podcast hosted by the Brookings Institution last year, Chang lamented what he called a lack of “manufacturing talents” in the United States, owing to generations of ambitious Americans flocking to finance and internet companies instead. (“I don’t really think it’s a bad thing for the United States, actually,” he said, “but it’s a bad thing for trying to do semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.”) [2]
About your last paragraph, how does Intel and Global Foundries (IBM and AMD) do it well? It sounds like moaning from a senior business person wants easy mode. This is a new step in TSMC's history: expanding manuf'ing overseas. I am curious how the new TSMC plant Japan will do.
I have no knowledge of this field, but my naive question would be, wouldn't building such advanced products involve so much more automation relative to number of human workers, that the salary of workers doesn't affect the cost that much?
> the salary of workers doesn't affect the cost that much
It doesn't and that's why Intel still has foundaries in Oregon and Arizona.
The difference is TSMC's leadership doesn't want to play ball with American work culture and wants to keep pushing the 996 mentality (yes, even Taiwan has an extreme overwork and underpay problem).
The Foundary space is a very low margin industry. There's a reason why the only companies left are TSMC, Samsung, Intel, and GlobalFoundaries.
While the TSMC plant in Chandler has been plagued with bad press, the Intel plant right next door has been expanding with almost no hiccups.