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Comment by burnte | Hacker News Reader

They say "if you want to do business in the US, with US companies, don't deal with these people/groups/countries."

Exactly this...and since the US is by far the biggest revenue source for semiconductors it would be stupid to ignore this rule. Taiwan in general wants to maintain favor with the US because of the invasion threat of China as well (although I'm not 100% confident the US would get involved in that fight).

> US is by far the biggest revenue source for semiconductors

It's actually China, where sales account for 29% of global semiconductor sales, compared to 26% for the Americas (NA & SA).

https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/SI... (PDF)

I guess this doesn't take into account semiconductors that go to China to be used in devices manufactured there, and then sold to other countries? I'd have thought that wealthy and IT-heavy USA together with other countries in the Americas (1B people) are buying more end products with semiconductors than China. Also, Europe (wealthy 9% of world pop) probably buys more semiconductors (in end products) than 11%.

Remember the population of China is huge. I could totally imagine China out-buying the USA in consumer electronics.

thank you for posting this link, very interesting reading. If you have more of the similar materials, I would be very interested. Thank you !

Other than reports from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), which represents the American semiconductor industry and published the above report, there are also the reports with past data and forecasts from World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS): https://www.wsts.org/76/PRESS-ARCHIVE

These are not as frequent or detailed as the SIA reports, but they are another source for comparison.

You can also check import/export/re-export statistics by industry and country using the International Trade Centre's Trade Map tool: https://www.trademap.org/Index.aspx

This does not include goods that are produced and used domestically.

US sanctions go far beyond that. As I said, US sanctions are designed to be highly "infectious," so that activities that don't seem to have any US connection fall under the US sanctions regime.

The world economy is tightly interconnected, so almost any economic activity anywhere on Earth has at least some incidental, indirect connection to the US (and to China, and to the EU). Imposing such a wide-ranging secondary sanctions regime is extremely disruptive, and it's viewed by other countries as an attack on their sovereignty. When Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, he effectively forced the EU to also renege on the deal, because US sanctions banned virtually every EU company from doing business with Iran. The EU could no longer determine its own trade and foreign policy with Iran.

The answer to this is probably for other countries that want to retain their sovereignty to impose retaliatory sanctions on the US when it targets their companies. The EU is not sufficiently politically unified to do this, though, and most other countries/blocs (except for China) don't have the heft to go one-on-one against the US.

"for other countries that want to retain their sovereignty to impose retaliatory sanctions on the US when it targets their companies."

I wouldn't hold your breath.

The issue is that the US has used sanctions dishonestly in the past as a way to remove competitors from markets it's planning to let its own companies take over at a later point. Fully trusting the US is foolish. It's a fickle ally.

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