No need for one country to control chip industry, Taiwan official says

TAIPEI: There is no need for one country to control the semiconductor industry, which is complex and needs a division of labour, Taiwan’s top technology official said on Saturday after US President Donald Trump criticised the island’s chip dominance.

Trump repeated claims on Thursday that Taiwan had taken the industry and he wanted back in the United States, saying he aimed to restore US chip manufacturing.

Wu Cheng-wen, head of Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council, did not name Trump in a Facebook post but referred to Taiwan President Lai Ching-te’s comments on Friday that the island would be a reliable partner in the democratic supply chain of the global semiconductor industry.

Wu wrote that Taiwan has in recent years often been asked how its semiconductor industry had become an internationally acclaimed benchmark.

“How did we achieve this? Obviously, we did not gain this for no reason from other countries,” he said, recounting how the government developed the sector from the 1970s, including helping found TSMC, now the world’s largest contract chipmaker, in 1987.

“This shows that Taiwan has invested half a century of hard work to achieve today’s success, and it certainly wasn’t something taken easily from other countries.”

Each country has its own speciality for chips, from Japan making chemicals and equipment to the United States, which is “second to none” on the design and application of innovative systems, Wu said.

“The semiconductor industry is highly complex and requires precise specialisation and division of labour. Given that each country has its own unique industrial strengths, there is no need for a single nation to fully control or monopolise all technologies globally.”

Taiwan is willing to be used as a base to assist “friendly democratic countries” in playing their appropriate roles in the semiconductor supply chain, Wu said.