

Not only that, but the table itself tells a lie.
- first column heading: “tariffs charged to the USA”
- first column content: trade deficit expressed as percentage
They needed numbers to look like other countries are mistreating the US. They made up some numbers. He went on the big screen to tell yet another lie.
For example, the average tariff on US goods in Europe until now is around 4% (probably less). He’s representing it as 39%.


Note: design and licensing is a far cry for semiconductor fabbing, and not every country can do the latter.
Most countries depend ridiculously much on TSMC (from Taiwan), while TSMC depends ridiculously much on instruments from ASML (from the Netherlands). Grossly simplified, getting where those two currently are takes a decade, and by that time they’ll be a decade ahead (unless they get lazy).
As far as I recall, Samsung (South Korea) can fabricate large quantities of semiconductors on their own (but several times less than TSMC). Then come several Chinese companies, one in the US and one in Israel. Beyond that, there’s very small fish. The only European foundry worth mentioning (X-Fab) has dropped out of the top 10.