the semiconductor industry is truly the engine room of the global economy chips go into everything from your smartphone to your car to massive data centers and the web of Global Connections is enormous asml in the Netherlands producing the lithography machines that are shipped to tsmc here in Taiwan that manufactures the actual chips using designs from arm in the UK Nvidia and apple China the biggest consumer of semiconduct on the planet just think of all the electronics that China produces and a country that’s also trying to build out its own chip industry so it’s less reliant on the west and that has put the broader industry in the crosshairs of Washington they have imposed export controls and tariffs to try to contain China’s chip industry they’ve also spent heavily to try to ensure there’s production and more of it on us soil tariffs can only go so far no company builds chips from the start to finish the relationships the interconnection relationships so complicated in this industry meaning that tariffs don’t always work and then there’s a risk of retaliation from China itself which happens to have almost a strangle hold on the rare earth or minerals that go into chips themselves