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Comment by nbevans | Hacker News Reader

Two questions:

Why would copy-pasted (from EU REACH) "UK REACH" regulations present more of a burden to the semiconductor industry than EU REACH?

What NTBs exist that are known to affect the semiconductor industry?

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Because it's now two things to care of. Which will diverge eventually, even if only ever so slightly. If not, what's the point of the whole exercise?

It just adds additional friction. Whereas when you set out your supply chains within the EU single market you don't have to deal with that.

That's your take. Business' take is that they are more than willing to invest the time to find nuanced subtle differences between countries regulatory environments so that they can exploit them for monetary gain. The UK REACH and EU REACH regulations apply to production process - not to the finished exportable product. Hence TSMC in this case would only need to implement REACH within the country it has chosen as its production base. Between the choice of the UK or EU - this would mean it is still only "one thing" to take care of. Unless it ever intended to open production bases in both territories - in which case the territory with the "older" version of REACH would almost certainly win any "ease of doing business" test - so probably the UK at some future date once EU REACH Version 2 materialises (and assuming the UK doesn't blindly copy-paste it again).

Given that the UK decided not to make itself subject to REACH, that presumably means it wants to diverge, which introduces uncertainty. Now, it's _possible_ that having its own copy of REACH was just political posturing (if you're taking the cynical approach, you might assume that this is even likely), but I can't imagine anyone would want to depend on that.

> "Given that the UK decided not to make itself subject to REACH, that presumably means it wants to diverge, which introduces uncertainty. Now, it's _possible_ that having its own copy of REACH was just political posturing (if you're taking the cynical approach, you might assume that this is even likely), but I can't imagine anyone would want to depend on that."

There is no difference to TSMC. The UK "diverging" i.e. making changes to its UK REACH regulations, versus the EU making changes to its EU REACH regulations. To TSMC these events would be one and the same. Uncertainty exists at all times. Business recognises this and, like the Internet, routes around it when possible or otherwise just absorbs it and gets on with business.

The UK copy-pasting EU REACH into UK REACH was /obviously/ done for business stability and environmental reasons and because generally it was just the right thing to do. Painting it as "political posturing" is certainly a highly cynical even hyperbolic interpretation.

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