Thursday, October 7th 2021
Intel CEO Cites Brexit as Reason for Chip Fab Plans in UK Not an Option
In an interview with the BBC, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said that the company is no longer considering the UK as a site for a chip fab, due to Brexit, something the company had apparently done prior to Brexit. Now the company is looking for a location in another EU country for a US$95 billion investment for a new semiconductor plant, as well as upgrades to its current plants in Ireland.
Although Intel had not made any firm decisions on a site location prior to Brexit, Gelsinger is quoted as saying "I have no idea whether we would have had a superior site from the UK, but we now have about 70 proposals for sites across Europe from maybe 10 different countries." He continues "We're hopeful that we'll get to agreement on a site, as well as support from the EU... before the end of this year."
Gelsinger also talked about the current chip production imbalance in the world, pointing out that the US only produces some 12 percent of the world's semiconductors, whereas Samsung and TSMC combined, account for nearly 70 percent of the global supply. As such, Intel, as well as US and European politicians want to see a shift towards more locally produced semiconductors. Much of this is in the name of national security, but then you'd expect there to be a push for a lot more things to be produced locally in addition to just semiconductors.
There's no doubt that Intel's new-ish CEO likes to make bold statements, as he's quoted saying "This is an industry that we created in the US, Intel's the company that puts silicon into Silicon Valley," when asked if Intel can maintain its leading edge versus its Asian competitors. In all fairness, he continues "But we realise these are good companies, they're well capitalised, they're investing, they're innovating together. So we have to re-earn that right of unquestioned leadership."
In the same interview, he states that he's not expecting the current chip shortage to stabilise until 2023, although things should apparently improve come next year. In other words, expect a lot of soft packages from Santa this year and maybe even next year.
Source:
BBC News
Although Intel had not made any firm decisions on a site location prior to Brexit, Gelsinger is quoted as saying "I have no idea whether we would have had a superior site from the UK, but we now have about 70 proposals for sites across Europe from maybe 10 different countries." He continues "We're hopeful that we'll get to agreement on a site, as well as support from the EU... before the end of this year."
There's no doubt that Intel's new-ish CEO likes to make bold statements, as he's quoted saying "This is an industry that we created in the US, Intel's the company that puts silicon into Silicon Valley," when asked if Intel can maintain its leading edge versus its Asian competitors. In all fairness, he continues "But we realise these are good companies, they're well capitalised, they're investing, they're innovating together. So we have to re-earn that right of unquestioned leadership."
In the same interview, he states that he's not expecting the current chip shortage to stabilise until 2023, although things should apparently improve come next year. In other words, expect a lot of soft packages from Santa this year and maybe even next year.
110 Comments on Intel CEO Cites Brexit as Reason for Chip Fab Plans in UK Not an Option
Still, great place for corp Merica to avoid tax and for priests to cop a feel.
If we're bringing random leaders into the picture, let's not forget about Hitler - he was democratically voted into power as well. Was he just carrying out the will of the people too?
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Orbán“Illiberal democracy,” his own words… much respect for the ignorant masses democracy so good the people’s will etc
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illiberal_democracy
Edit: Love the false equivalency between Soros and the EU; “I don’t hate Jews it’s just that they’re vampires” lol, “I’m not xenophobic I just don’t like difference,” “I don’t like ‘communism’ (state capitalism) but Putin got it right,” keep it up my guy :cool:
making childrenfamily, you don't need to frown upon people who think differently, yet that's exactly what you get from the majority of Hungarians.By disagreeing, do you mean that Hungary is an Orbanist Catholic nation, and if one thinks differently, they can go F themselves? In that case, you sound like any other brainwashed Hungarian bigot. That's the shining example of democracy for you. No wonder I'm only ever going back there to visit my parents once a year.
btw I'm an American. My family came to the US from Norway (Trondheim) and the Netherlands (Frisia). It seems like it's too easy to play the racist card these days with someone who has a different opinion. Catch my drift.
(And no, it doesn’t matter if you married a Jewish person or have Jewish friends — using terms like globalist and castigating a Jewish person, like Soros, as foreign interlopers, is xenophobic, especially while defending talking heads for the great replacement theory, which is racist on face, is in fact a tacit complicity with racism. I live in a predominately conservative Jewish community — they held mask burnings through the pandemic and are anti-vax (odd because they’re devout Zionists and Israel had an excellent response to the pandemic), hate the democrats, attempt to rig elections, hate Palestinians, get along with the adjacent Caribbean community, etc, too. That doesn’t mean they represent all Jewish people, but identity is not a get out of jail free card, just like the proud boys being “anti-racist as long as we’re separated” makes them racist).
Also, you're quite grossly misrepresenting the EEA, which Norway is part of. The EEA is very much a "EU light" deal, where member states are subject to most EU rules and regulations, but have some autonomy at the cost of having no say in the formation of these EU rules (those are decided by MEPs and committee members, after all, which no EEC country has as they aren't EU members). It also has severe democratic problems in that, unlike as an EU member, once an EU rule is accepted and implemented, there is no way of reversing this. This is a hot topic for debate in Norway after the recent election as one of the parties in the new government is very keen on pulling out of ACER and the most recent EU railway package (both of which, for the record, are deeply problematic). I'm just as ambiguous about EEA membership as I am about the EU, but I don't believe Norway resigning from the EEA would solve anything either. Quite the opposite.
Also, I never said that any such deal was one-sided. Trade deals literally can't be, as trade is a two-way exchange even in the most exploitative of situations. I'd love to see some examples of bureaucratic measurements to slow down UK trade that don't exist for EEC nations though - any sources? Speaking from a Norwegian perspective, our trade with the EU is extremely strictly regulated and policed, and any avoidance of bottlenecks comes from the strict adherence to those rules.
My main point though: you're arguing that the EU should accept a trade deal on (mostly) the UK's terms, and that this would be a logical and rational thing to do. Yet the UK has clearly demonstrated that it is only in it for themselves, which completely undermines that idea. Through leaving the EU they rejected an established, functional if problematic, wide-ranging cooperative arrangement on the basis that it wasn't sufficiently beneficial for them. Which, it is becoming clear, wasn't only untrue (the pre-Brexit exodus of highly educated and highly productive EU citizen workers in every sector from tech to academia and science to business is a good example of this, though by far not the only one) but is also rightly interpreted by the EU as an explicit statement of self-interest above all else. If it wasn't above all else, they would have stayed and tried to improve things from the inside. After all, the UK was part of first the EEC, then the EU, from 1973 onwards. They have been central to its development for five decades. They have received massive benefits from this membership (it's not like the British economy was doing great in the late 60s or early 70s) - but they have also contributed to other countries, obviously. That's how cooperation tends to work. So the UK's leaving is then unambiguously a statement of not accepting this split, and a statement of a desire for a different deal that is more beneficial to the UK. Hence my question: why on earth would the EU be interested in this? Why would their response be anything but "yeah, sorry, you made your own bed"?
Let's try to look at this trhough an analogy: if you're running a company with a board consisting of 20-odd people each controlling large but variously sized and impactful departments, and one of the board members announces they are unhappy with their compensation (despite having been formative in company development for decades), are leaving the company to start their own, and then subsequently demand a cooperative deal with your company where they do mostly what they used to, just selectively more beneficial to them. Why on earth would the company say yes to that? The only situation in which that would make sense is if the department that split off delivered a unique and irreplacable set of funcitons. That is not the case for the UK, despite their own delusions of grandeur. They're just another country at this point. The UK voluntarily placed themselves on par with other reasonably geographically close non-member countries - except none of those have been spewing propagandist rhetoric towards them for the past 5+ years. Why would the EU be more inclined to give the UK a preferential trade deal than Turkey, or Marocco, or Russia, or any other country?The EU only has regulatory power over this deal as it pertains to trade impacting the EU, i.e. licencing to companies that do significant trade in the EU. I sincerely doubt they'd be willing to take the establishment of EU labs for ARM as any type of compensation for the risk that Nvidia might be more restrictive in ARM licencing for competitive reasons. Remember, the main tax income to the EU in this? It comes from taxing these companies locally + income tax on their employees. Also, your taxation example doesn't work - ARM and the companies licencing their tech decide entirely freely which entities these are licenced from (except for trade embargoes and sanctions - but I doubt ARM will establish a global licencing entity in Iran or North Korea any time soon). That could be the UK company, or some spin-off in a Caribbean tax haven, or literally anything else. Establishing ARM labs in the EU would do nothing to change this. Nothing whatsoever. And the EU - and the UK, and ARM, and Nvidia - are entirely aware of their inability to control this. Also, you say "nobody wants [the ARM acquisition to fall through]", and list the EU as one of the entities not wanting this. Why would they want that merger to go through? There is no benefit to the EU in such a thing - if anything, it removes ARM from their immediate geographic and economic vicinity. The European Commission mostly seems good at trying to uphold actual functioning competition and try to hold back on monopolizing tendencies (though it's by no means perfect - it's just a bit less ineffectual than most entities nominally trying to do the same), which is a much more reasonable explanation of why they would be skeptical of an Nvidia-ARM acquisition.Did you read my previous posts?As are all countries and international cooperative organizations, sadly. I would rank them reasonably low on the scale of just how protectionist though - they do a lot of foreign aid, investment in third party countries, and their trade deals are slightly less draconean than most. Not by much, but slightly.IMO, not having a common military is one of the best sides of the EU, as it acts as a buffer between military and economic power. The US is a prime example of how wrong things can go when you have a lot of both with no separation.You seem to not know what a trade war is. Refusing a trade deal is not a trade war. Failed negotiation is not the same as outright conflict.Lol, "the globalists". That phrase always cracks me up. Wasn't it mentioned above that the UK is joining the CPTPP - an extension of the Trans Pacific Partnership? Also know as the most explicitly neo-imperialist, forcibly neoliberalist, undemocratic trade agreement ever drafted? It's pretty hard to be more "globalist" than backing something like that.Instead they fathom the concept of an electoral system not updated since when horseback messengers were the fastest means of conveying election results, giving them the most indirect democracy on the planet? Yeah, that's not much better. As I said above, the EU has significant and deep-seated democratic problems, but that really doesn't make it any worse than your contrasting examples here. Also, all Brussels officials are elected - they are representatives of the elected governments of each member state. The apparatus surrounding them are hired bureaucrats, but that is the same in literally every democracy across the globe. And no, the courts are not elected - that would be really problematic. It's clear that the EU needs significant reform to make a claim to functional democracy (abolishing the veto, among other things), but it's by no means the worst thing out there.No, I believe Viktor Orban is xenophobic due to his consistent use of xenophobic rhetoric and propaganda, just as I see him as dangerously antidemocratic due to his consistent war on critical thinking and undermining of democratic processes, and a lot more.I would be all for that if they managed to do so without being extremely racist and xenophobic while doing so. All you're doing here is drawing up a straw man argument - nobody has argued against what you are saying, we have argued against the deeply problematic and antidemocratic policies, actions and attitudes demonstrated by the people in question. We (or at least I) have also argued for the logic of consequences from actions and accountability, rather than the wishful thinking made-up dream scenario where Britain had the negotiating power to get a better deal with the EU from the outside than from within. Neither of these topics relates to "the right to control their own borders". That is such a broad and vague concept, and one that mainly pertains to the physical movement of people (and goods, but that is mostly secondary, at least in the rhetoric of both Farage, Orban and their allies) and not internal laws, trade deals or consequences for actions. If you believe this issue can't be properly addresed without bringing it to a much broader and more general level like that, you need to argue for that stance, and not frame it as a misleading "gotcha" point.
And god knows what the "more CPUs" than Apple actually means.
IOh, please, give me a break.
Coming from someone who is now working on UK bureaucracy filling in the gaps created by pulling out of EU.
More than two thirds of business by UK was with EU countries and most of it was transparent and hassle free.
Now that luxury is gone and every single piece of crap needs to be declared, new processes are being established.
Was the goal to distance from EU? Welp, regardless, that's what is going to happen. And that is why businesses interested in EU market will be less interested in UK as a base for their operations.
As for "Norway style deal" => this is so wrong it hurts.
All countries within EU trade umbrella agree to the same rules, the very "bureaucracy" that you just voted against (that was bringing you, among other things, free mobile roaming).
If UK did sign for Norway like agreement, it would largely mean remaining in the previous state BUT losing the leverage UK had over EU for no good reason.
That is, perhaps, the key reason why Boris botched the deal so much and tries to distance further (dirty play around Irish agreements).