Trump's tariffs on chip making tools make​s U.S.​ made processors more expensive

[John Clark]

On Mon, Apr 7, 2025 at 3:48 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:

> A lot is going on that I just don't understand. 

What's happening is just what you'd expect to happen if you hand over the controls of the most powerful economy in the world to a man who has so little understanding of economics that he couldn't figure out how to get his casino to make money. You can be pretty confident that a man like that will drive an economy, any economy, into a ditch quite quickly.  

 

> The US is raising the cost of chip production machines with large tariffs.  This will cause lower chip production which I don't think was intended but when you stick a large tariff on machines that cost well over $100 million companies will buy fewer of them. The other strange thing is the attempt to keep high-end chip-making machines from the Chinese.  That seems incompatible with ruining the market for these machines and expecting the machine builders (and countries) not to seek a market in China.)

Yes exactly! The Dutch Company ASML makes the world's most advanced chip lithography machine, the $380 million Twinscan EXE:5000, nobody else has anything even close to it, it's a high numerical aperture device that uses extreme ultraviolet light. Below is a picture of the machine which is about the size of a diesel locomotive and weighs 150 tons. It's shipped from Holland in 250 separate crates and requires about six months for 250 ASML engineers to reassemble and calibrate it before it can be used:  

It was designed to produce 3 nanometer chips and can crank out 185 wafers per hour, but if you push it you can get down to 2 nanometers and apparently the Taiwan company TSML, which has bought several of these machines, did just that because a few days ago they announced they will start mass producing 2 nm chips in the second half of this year. 2 nm is about the width of 20 Hydrogen atoms or 8 cesium atoms.

The 'World's Most Advanced Microchip' Has Been Unveiled

China desperately wants to buy a bunch of those $380 million machines but ASML (which I remind you is a Dutch company not American) won't sell them any because of pressure from the USA,  ASML had only been allowed to sell the much cheaper and far less sophisticated 38 nanometer NXT:2000i to China, but in early 2024 Biden stop them from selling even that. However Trump's recent actions have greatly reduced the efficacy of the pressure the US can exert on that Dutch company. So I wouldn't be surprised if ASML soon changes its policy and starts to sell China anything they want. 

And this will make America great again?  

> But what do I know?

You know one hell of a lot more than Donald Trump! But then again so does just about everybody.  

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

e4z

 

[John Clark]

O