“If you want to reestablish a complete Semiconductor supply chain in the U.S., you will not find it as a possible task,” said Chang in Taipei last night, “even after you spend hundreds of billions of dollars, you will still find the supply chain to be incomplete, and you will find that it will be very high cost, much higher costs than what you currently have.”
Chang gave a similar warning back in July. “If no one says anything about this, it could turn out to be terrible,” he said, “what may happen is that after hundreds of billions and many years have been spent, the result will still be a not-quite-self-sufficient and a high-cost supply chain.”
Politicians in the US and Europe, reacting to the chip shortage, are trying to boost domestic production but the complexity of the semiconductor supply chain may be so great that this is an impossible task however much is spent.