Eyck Freymann

The semiconductor industry, depending on how you define it with related services industries, it's something like 5% of employment in Taiwan, but it's an outsized share of Taiwan's exports.

And right now, just as you look at the macro data, Taiwan's exports are booming because no one can get enough of their chips.

There is an entire ecosystem of universities, vocational training centers, companies that supply to TSMC.

This is a national champion in so many ways.

And they get tax benefits and subsidized land.

And Taiwan's political economy is organized around making them a success, just as Taiwan's

South Korea has been organized around making Samsung and others a success.

TSMC is smart enough to know that it has to deal with administrations of both parties.

But TSMC is also caught in a US-China tension too.

And TSMC doesn't share the United States political objectives here.

TSMC is happy to sell to China.

They don't have a problem if China buys lots of their chips.

But they have to work with the United States because ultimately they're fabricating chips at the high end that are made with U.S.

designs.

So the U.S.

does have the ability to export control where those final products go.

Yes.

Well, our longstanding policy is that it's the right of the people of Taiwan to decide their own future.

And that's a principled position that we hold for a reason that is also self-interested.

which is if Taiwan decides that they want to submit or they want to take a deal and they want to unify with the mainland, by the way, the mainland uses this term reunification.