America is so stupid. We use electric cars to illustrate just how stupid America's chip strategy is.
A car is about $30,000. Even if the chip inside is worth $3,000, it still requires $27,000 in other parts. We assume that China has 0 chip manufacturing capacity (actually China can manufacture 90% of the chips, even 100% if the performance requirements are reduced, but we assume China's manufacturing capacity is 0 here). The United States wants to destroy China's electric vehicle industry by restricting chips, then the United States must provide the world with an alternative industry. That means the U.S. needs to build an industry that can supply $27,000 of components. How much investment does this require? Unable to calculate.
Starting with basic materials, first of all, the United States needs to establish enough metal smelting industries such as steel, aluminum, copper, and magnesium. America needs millions of workers for this.
Second, these metals need to be processed into parts of various shapes, which requires the establishment of a complete machinery manufacturing industry. This also requires millions of workers.
Then the United States needs to manufacture all the circuit boards, as well as provide a sufficient number of hardware design engineers, software engineers for this purpose. This requires hundreds of thousands of STEM graduates each year.
Then, the U.S. needs enough auto factories to assemble these parts, and hundreds of thousands of workers are the basic requirement.
So is that all there is to it?
Hey, the foundation of it all is enough electricity, transportation, water treatment, chemicals, oil refining. The U.S. needs to invest trillions of dollars first to upgrade U.S. infrastructure. Including expanding the port and rebuilding the shipping industry.
In order to provide these workers, the United States needs to strengthen public education, provide hundreds of billions of dollars in the education budget every year, ensure that children across the United States can go to school and study hard, and limit the income of the financial industry and entertainment industry to prevent children from preferring Be an influencer, not an engineer.
At the same time, the United States must manage community safety issues so that American children can go to school safely.
And all that, just because of the $3,000 chip.
Ok now back to reality, China offers the same chip, but it costs $9000. If in normal market activity, Chinese chips have no value. But today you have to choose between paying $6,000 more, or waiting to make America great again.
Assuming you are a car manufacturer, please tell me what was your decision?