It's being reported today that a speech at an industry event in Taipei today, TSMC's CEO CC Wei warned of the dangers of excessive government export controls, which can erode mutual trust between countries. Wei stated that “Export controls and banning products from other foreign countries destroy productivity and efficiency gained under globalization, or at least they reduce benefits offered by a free market.”

Wei further noted that "the scariest thing is that mutual trust and cooperation among countries is beginning to weaken,” he added, saying that a distorted market leads to higher costs as he urged politicians to come up with an alternative solution..

The US blacklisted more Chinese companies and escalated trade tensions earlier this week. It included dozens of Chinese technology companies on its so-called Entity List, making it almost impossible for them to procure critical foreign components and ratcheting up a trade conflict between the world’s two largest economies.

On December 6, Tim Cook briefly spoke at TSMC's plant construction event attended by industry leaders and President Biden. Cook stated that Apple silicon unlocks a new level of performance for our users. And soon, many of the chips can be stamped "Made in America." And although the Arizona plant will initially provide 4nm chips by 2024 and 3nm chips by 2026, the fact is that TSMC will be making 2nm and even 1nm chips in the 2026-2027 time frame at their Taiwanese chip plants.

Wei went on to state that TSMC is constructing new fabs to satisfy its customers’ demand rather than fulfil requests from foreign governments. For instance, the plant that's being built in Kumamoto prefecture in Japan is aimed at helping Sony Group Corp supply enough chips to TSMC’s biggest customer, a reference to Apple Inc. For more on this, read the full Bloomberg report.

The TSMC-Sony Kumamoto plant will produce in-camera image sensors for Apple and chips for the automotive industry. Apple's CEO Tim Cook was in Kumamoto last week at Sony's camera sensor facility during his extensive tour of Japanese suppliers.

We’ve been partnering with Sony for over a decade to create the world’s leading camera sensors for iPhone. Thanks to Ken and everyone on the team for showing me around the cutting-edge facility in Kumamoto today. pic.twitter.com/462SEkUbhi

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) December 13, 2022

(Click on image to Greatly Enlarge)