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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

Taiwan does far more than just TSMC. That is just one single company, albeit a very essential one. For instance, I don't like to buy hand tools (impact sockets, torque wrenches, etc) made in China, but Taiwanese tools are a higher quality and I have no hesitation purchasing them.

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I suspect that the hand tools made in China aren't low quality because China doesn't have the tech to make them better, but instead because making cheap low quality tools is more profitable.

In fact, when taking apart China-made, China-designed products, I am frequently very impressed at cost-cutting measures that are taken with minimal impact on the functionality of the product.

Many computer/electrics manufacturers and OEMs, like ASUS, Acer, Foxconn, Wistron, Pegatron, MediaTek, Synology, etc are HQ'd in Taiwan. Though PRC company may be able to supersede them, unlike TSMC.

Essential for you. But overall tsmc eclipses everything else Taiwan makes.

If Taiwan stopped making those tools you would be impacted. The world overall... not so much.

> Essential for you. But overall tsmc eclipses everything else Taiwan makes.

TSMC’s revenue is less than a tenth of Taiwan’s total export revenue. They might be the most profitable of Taiwan’s companies, but Taiwan has a huge economy.

And it terms of impact on the world economy, Hon Hai precision, better known in the west as Foxconn, would like to say hi.

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