The U.S. Govts pours US$52B into subsidies for silicon chip manufacturing in the U.S.

[onetrack]

I'd wager the Americans would be screaming blue murder, and "unfair competition", if some other country subsidised manufacturing at this level. But because it's all for protection of the US economy, this is all O.K.

Big business in America is the most highly protected species in the Universe, and it'd be interesting to see which already exceptionally-wealthy giant corporations will pocket billions out of this exercise. 

 

https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2022-07-28/u-s-congress-passage-of-subsidies-prompts-chip-makers-to-move-on-projects

[Jerry_Atrick]

Th US is forever taking France or the EU to the WTO over subsidies to Airbus but finally looks resolved

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/06/15/us-and-eu-truce-boeing-airbus-dispute.html

[nomadpete]

OneT,

I'll take the devil's advocate position on subsidies. They can be beneficial to protect 'the national interest'.

 

We need to become more self reliant in order to avoid overseas interests influencing our country (such as being virtually politically blackmailed by sole suppliers of essential stuff from overseas).

I'd really like to see the Australian Governments to subsidise research and development here. And start up manufacturing here.

[nomadpete]

Did you know that we once had two companies making transistors, but they got shut down back in 1970.

 

With state of the art automation there is no reason we couldn't get into modern manufacturing. The chinese, taiwanese, Japanese, did very well even though they started way behind the eight ball - but they didn't expect to make massive profits right away. Westerners will continue sliding backwards until we apply long term planning.

[Old Koreelah]

Globalisation of trade has delivered a pretty good living to most of us, but it only works if everyone plays fair.
Australia tried to and threw away most of our manufacturing sector. We now find our economy dangerously dependent on the Middle Kingdom, which has been playing a long game. They have already used their near-monopoly on rare earths to lean on other countries. As a result, the US, Australia and others have been investing in akternative sources.

 

The west depends on Taiwan for much of its high-tech chip supply. China could invade tomorrow and snare an even more crippling economic hold on us than at present.
I’d be critical of any government that didn’t plan for that.

[pmccarthy]

11 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

Th US is forever taking France or the EU to the WTO over subsidies to Airbus but finally looks resolved

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/06/15/us-and-eu-truce-boeing-airbus-dispute.html

George W Bush said the French don’t even have a word for entrepreneur.

[Marty_d]

On 29/07/2022 at 10:03 AM, nomadpete said:

Did you know that we once had two companies making transistors

That's an interesting word.  Men who identify as nuns?