Good Question

By Ron Beasley

Posting at The Moderate Voice Jack Grant asks an excellent question:

Recently, John Cole at Balloon Juice has asked in regards to the Big Three automakers in the United State, “why bail them out?” There are some who argue that car manufacturing is a “strategic industry” that cannot be allowed to leave the United States.

My question is this: how is making cars more strategic than making the integrated circuits that go into the smart bombs and missiles and computers and other high tech instruments that we now depend upon to minimize casualties on our side when we go to war?

Guess what… the industry that makes those integrated circuits has already left the country. Only one major company still has plans and the ability to build state of the art integrated circuit factories in the United States. Yet, I don’t hear anyone claiming we need to bail out the troubled semiconductor companies.

The vast majority of computer chips are now made in Taiwan or Singapore, within shouting distance of China.

Is this really how we want a truly strategic industry to be run, with the factories offshore and located near our biggest potential rival?

This is indeed a national security issue but you don't hear the modern Republican party talking about it.  Of course the chips are being manufactured in Asia because that's where most the customers are - the companies that are making the electronics being sold in the US.  IC manufacturing won't move back to US shores until electronics manufacturing returns.

Comments

[Steve Hynd]

Worse, the primary source for the rare earths used to make such chips is China. It practically monoploizes world production.

Regards, C