For Taiwan’s crucial chip industry, Trump and Harris both bring risks

Al Jazeera:

Taipei, Taiwan – For engineers working in Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, the past few years have been difficult.

The United States’s efforts to curb the growing power of China, Taiwan’s neighbour, by cutting off its access to the most cutting-edge chips has put the island’s chip sector in the crosshairs of the world’s most consequential geopolitical rivalry.

For Taiwan, the US-China competition for dominance is a double-edged sword.

On one hand, US efforts to restrain China’s growing power and influence serve as a counter to the risk of a possible future Chinese invasion of the self-governing island, which Beijing considers its territory.

On the other, they have made doing business more complicated for semiconductor and equipment makers in Taiwan, which sell a large portion of such “critical technology” to China.

Despite its small size, Taiwan produces nearly 60 percent of the world’s supply of semiconductor chips and nearly 90 percent of the most advanced chips needed to power everything from smartphones to artificial intelligence.