This Op-Ed is special to the Mirror by Paul Plante
Before we get to the meat of the matter here, another title for this thread could have been “Joe Biden’s Ultra-MAGA Great Leap Forward,” although that title would not have truly captured the essence of the madness afoot here as contained in Joe Biden’s First Five Year Plan which we will soon be discussing; and another perhaps more proper title would have been “Joe Biden says America First to Build Back Better to Make America Great Again,” but that would have been too long a title so I condensed it down to its essence, which is insanity and madness in a time of Joe Biden, and here I am talking specifically about the “Statement from President Biden on House Passage of CHIPS and Science Act to Lower Costs, Create Good-Pay Jobs and Strengthen Our National Security,” on July 28, 2022, coupled with a Reuters article on August 3, 2022 titled “As U.S. eyes new China chip curbs, turmoil looms for global market” by Joyce Lee, both of which must be taken together to put flesh on the bones, so to speak, of the title above about madness and insanity in a time of Joe Biden, and the issue, in addition to the further disruption of the global economy caused by other Biden actions has to do with water, and the short-sightedness of the Biden administration as it sacrifices our tomarrow for political gains and expediency for the Biden administration and the Democrats today.
And here, before we go further, we have to ask ourselves this important and relevant question, the answer to which will be coming along shortly, to wit:
I. HOW MUCH WATER DOES A CHIP FAB REQUIRE ON A DAILY BASIS?
And that takes us to the madness and insanity of Joe Biden in his First Five-Year Plan in imitation of Joe Stalin of the Soviet Union which in turn takes us to his “Statement from President Biden on House Passage of CHIPS and Science Act to Lower Costs, Create Good-Pay Jobs and Strengthen Our National Security,” wherein Joe Biden tells the nation and the world, and us, as follows in typical shallow-thinking Joe Biden fashion as follows:
“Today, the House passed a bill that will make cars cheaper, appliances cheaper, and computers cheaper.”
“It will lower the costs of everyday goods.”
“And, it will create high-paying manufacturing jobs across the country and strengthen U.S. leadership in the industries of the future at the same time.”
Now, talk about a political propaganda coup here, people, that sounds grand and glorious, does it not, far, far better than merely a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage, which isn’t much compared to what Joe is offering us here, as Joe and the Democrats continue their efforts to build back better to make America great again by a policy of America first, which means elbowing other countries, starting with China, another hated enemy of Joe Biden and the Democrats, along with Russia, both run by “autocrats” who pose a real serious threat to our “sacred democracy” that Joe and the Democrats are champions of, out of the way of a resurgent America led forth on the world stage by Joe and Nancy Pelosi, who just returned from Taiwan where she was greeted and treated as the queen she really is as is her due.
And that in turn brings us to the Reuters article mentioned above where we learn more about the madness and insanity of Joe’s plans to reconfigure America and the world in his image as follows, to wit:
SEOUL, Aug 3 (Reuters) – Export restrictions being considered by Washington to halt China’s advances in semiconductor manufacturing could come at a substantial cost, experts say, potentially disrupting fragile global chip supply chains – and hurting U.S. businesses.
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China, people, is like a serpent in the Garden of Eden Joe and the Democrats are promising, and so it is the duty of Joe Biden today to crush the head of the serpent, for the good of the world that sorely needs the stern, guiding hand of Joe Biden to lead it into a Pax Biden that will last for a thousand years by destroying China’s economy along with the economy of Germany and Russia, but really, people, does that matter, that to make America great again by building it back better by a policy of America First, that fragile global chip supply chains would be disrupted, which would hurt U.S. businesses?
Afterall, to build back better, isn’t it first necessary to destroy what now exists in order to clear away the old and prepare the ground and pave the way towards the grand and glorious future Joe is promising us, with cars being cheaper, and appliances being cheaper, and computers being cheaper, and with the costs of everyday goods being lowered while high-paying manufacturing jobs are being created across the country and U.S. leadership in the industries of the future at the same time will be strengthened?
My goodness, who can possibly be against that?
So let’s get some more details here, as follows:
Reuters reported on Monday that the United States is considering limiting shipments of American chipmaking equipment to memory chip producers in China that make advanced semiconductors used in everything from smartphones to data centres.
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And that is the way a REAL WORLD LEADER like Joe Biden does things – grab the bull by the horns, deftly flip it over on its back, and stomp on its neck and it is done!
If Joe prevents the Chinese from getting chipmaking equipment, then the Chinese can’t make chips!
So how brilliant is the thinking of Joe Biden here, and how he has seen to the core of the matter as to what should be done to make America great again by building it back better after first destroying it by his America First policy?
But what about this “harm” thing?
Besides the Chinese, who everybody knows need to be harmed, who else is going to “get it in the neck” as a result of Joe’s America First policy here?
Let’s go back to Reuters and take a look:
The curbs would stop chipmakers like South Korean giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix from shipping new technology tools to factories they operate in China, preventing them from upgrading plants that serve customers around the world.
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To which, Joe says he doesn’t care, because they aren’t Americans, and they aren’t American companies, which makes them a threat to building back better America to make it great again, and so, they have got to go, too, especially because of the following, to wit:
Samsung and SK Hynix, which control more than half of the global NAND flash memory chip market, have invested heavily in China in recent decades to produce chips that are vital to customers including tech giants Apple, Amazon, Facebook owner Meta and Google.
As well as computers and phones, the chips are used in products like electric vehicles that require digital data storage.
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And look at that, people, those foreigners have gotten too greedy and too big for their britches and they are taking more than their share and besides, they are trading with Joe Biden’s enemy China, which puts our national security at risk, and so they too need their fangs pulled, which will cut them down to size where they need to be, and hey, in the end, it will all work out right and it will be not only good for America, but for tech giants Apple, Amazon, Facebook owner Meta and Google, as well.
And talking about threats to our national security that Joe Biden is going to put an end to, let’s again go back and see what Reuters has on that, as follows:
“Samsung’s China production alone accounts for more than 15% of global NAND flash production …”
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That, people, is a clear threat to our sacred democracy, having all those investments made in an autocracy, and so Joe has no other choice but to act, and to act decisively, and to act now, not tomorrow or the next day, or China will clearly win the race for the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY which can’t be allowed, period.
So what then can we expect when Joe strikes?
Here is what Reuters is telling us:
“If there’s any production disruption, it will make chip prices surge,” said Lee Min-hee, an analyst at BNK Securities.
The potential for fresh turmoil – the curbs have yet to be approved – comes just as a global chip supply shortage that has disrupted businesses from autos to consumer devices for more than a year is finally showing signs of easing.
Supply chain adjustments and weakening consumer demand amid the slowing global economy have combined to repair the damage.
But the shortage has yet to be fully resolved.
Any signs of fresh disruption could rekindle supply uncertainty, triggering a price surge – as seen earlier this year when China imposed COVID-19 restrictions in Xian where Samsung manufactures chips.
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And those high prices, of course, in a capitalistic country like ours, which Joe is going to build back better to make America great again, would serve as an incentive to make those chips here as opposed to in some foreign country that is not America, which would be good for our economy and our GDP, and some more fall-out that simply will have to be endured, because we are in a transition, people, as Peter Buttigieg says, and he would know, to wit:
Chipmaking equipment has to be installed and fully tested months before production is due to start.
Any delay in shipping the gear to China would pose a real challenge to chipmakers as they seek to manufacture more advanced chips in China facilities.
“Many U.S. companies, like Apple, use Samsung and SK Hynix memory chips.”
“No matter what strategy (the South Korean firms) end up choosing, it will have global implications,” said BNK Securities analyst Lee.
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And that is what I am calling insanity and madness, Joe Biden single-handedly disrupting the global economy with his “Ultra-MAGA,” but on the other hand, for there to be progress, especially when building back America better by a policy of America First to make it great again in order to provide the grand and glorious future Joe is promising us, with cars being cheaper, and appliances being cheaper, and computers being cheaper, and with the costs of everyday goods being lowered while high-paying manufacturing jobs are being created across the country and U.S. leadership in the industries of the future at the same time will be strengthened, somebody else has to be hurt, and that should be these foreign upstarts who are stealing market share from American companies who should be making chips here instead of somewhere else, and so, Joe is going to make that happen, come what may.
So how much water does it take to operate a chip fab then, when Joe starts building them here?
By some estimates, a large chip fab can use up to 10 million gallons of water a day, which is equivalent to the water consumption of roughly 300,000 households and that is because each chip needs to be rinsed with ultrapure water (UPW) — water so pure that is considered an industrial solvent — to remove debris (ions, particles, silica, etc.) from the manufacturing process and prevent the chips from becoming contaminated.
So where, then, is Joe Biden going to get all that water from?
Or doesn’t he have a clue?
Stay tuned as we explore this matter further, because the future Joe is going to impact is that of ourselves, our children and grandchildren and on down the line.
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And before we go further here with respect to the chaos the autocrat Joe Biden is getting set to unleash upon the world as part of his “Ultra-MAGA Great Leap Forward” as embodied in Joe’s First Five Year Plan now known to history as “Joe Biden’s America First Plan to Build America Back Better to Make America Great Again,” this as the autocrat Joe continues to grow our economy from the bottom up and middle out for working families all across the country, which is something we should all be for, because it is the right thing to do, and as we continue to follow the science, for today, science is our god and we truly worship it as a deity, it is necessary for all of us to understand and accept the fact that today, at this point of inflection which is really a transition to a new and better age on earth as a result of Joe Biden’s “BUILD BACK BETTER WORLD” Joe told us and the candid world about in his “Remarks by President Biden Before the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly” on September 21, 2021 at United Nations Headquarters in New York, New York at 10:01 A.M. EDT, we truly need Joe Biden not only as an autocrat in the United States of America, but more than that, the autocrat of the world, because at this inflection point in history, it is very apparent to everybody that democracy in the United States of America does not work anymore, precisely because democracy requires consensus, which in today’s polarized country, where Joe Biden considers a majority of the citizens to be “DREGS OF SOCIETY,” is not going to happen, so that Joe Biden wasting time trying to muster consensus simply takes too long in this fast-moving world, where Joe Biden intends to win the RACE FOR THE 21st CENTURY, which makes it clear to a blind man that only autocracies today are equipped to meet the extraordinary challenges of modern times, which is why God blessed us with Joe Biden as our autocrat to lead us forth into a grand and glorious future of his making, with Joe Biden’s Washington, D.C. being seen by all the world and us too as a SHINING CITY ON A HILL because it is the CITY OF JOE!
And with that understood and accepted, that Joe Biden is an autocrat because we need him to be, which means we want him to be, which gives him his mandate to be an autocrat blessed by the people whose lives he now rules over, to see the truly global scope of Joe Biden’s vision that leads us forth from the benighted ignorance of the Trump years in America into the light of a brand new day, the first day of the Biden Thousand Year Reich, and in turn brings us to this very moment in time, we need to go back to Joe’s “Remarks by President Biden Before the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly” on September 21, 2021 at United Nations Headquarters in New York, New York, where we have the global vision of Joe Biden’s “ULTRA-MAGA GREAT LEAP FORWARD” laid out for us in terms a common person without a JD from Harvard could understand, because in his heart, Joe is a die-hard Union man who knows in his heart the plight of the working classes in America, to wit:
Simply put: We stand, in my view, at an inflection point in history.
And I’m here today to share with you how the United States intends to work with partners and allies to answer these questions and the commitment of my new administration to help lead the world toward a more peaceful, prosperous future for all people.
Instead of continuing to fight the wars of the past, we are fixing our eyes on devoting our resources to the challenges that hold the keys to our collective future: ending this pandemic; addressing the climate crisis; managing the shifts in global power dynamics; shaping the rules of the world on vital issues like trade, cyber, and emerging technologies; and facing the threat of terrorism as it stands today.
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And today, in this thread, the focus will be on Joe Biden as AUTOCRAT OF THE WORLD writing the rules of the world on vital issues like trade and emerging technologies, which is what this Reuters article we shall be getting back to shortly is all about – Joe Biden writing those rules as if he were in fact the ruler of the world, as opposed to a deluded pretender.
Going back to Joe’s “Remarks by President Biden Before the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly” on September 21, 2021 at United Nations Headquarters in New York, New York, Joe went further into his vision of world domination by the United States under his command, as follows:
We will pursue new rules of global trade and economic growth that strive to level the playing field so that it’s not artificially tipped in favor of any one country at the expense of others and every nation has a right and the opportunity to compete fairly.
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ANTI-DOG EAT DOG LEGISLATION, people, from straight out of “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand who saw Joe Biden coming many, many years ago, and wrote about it in a very misunderstood novel that was a look into the future we are arriving at now.
Joe Biden’s ANTI-DOG-EAT-DOG RULE for the micro-chip industry is the logical result of a mixed economy, one in the process of rejecting capitalism.
And as far as Joe the Autocrat is concerned, when the government has the power to control and regulate private business, it’s in a position to dispense economic favors, and in power politics at the level Joe Biden plays the game, that is what the game is all about, having economic favors to dispense, so to make that happen, Joe is going to dominate weaker countries, whether by force, as he is doing with Russia, or economic coercion, or technological exploitation, as Joe is doing here, or disinformation.
So without further adieu, let us go back to the Reuters article on August 3, 2022 titled “As U.S. eyes new China chip curbs, turmoil looms for global market” by Joyce Lee, where we have further as follows concerning the madness, insanity and chaos the autocrat Joe is about to unleash upon the world, to wit:
In Samsung’s memory chip operation in Xian, central China, one of the largest foreign chip projects in the country, the company has invested a total of about $26 billion since it broke ground on the site in 2012, including chip production as well as testing and packaging.
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And that is why Joe Biden’s ANTI DOG-EAT-DOG LEGISLATION for the chip industry in America is so vital, because that dog in China is clearly too big, while these dogs in America are too small, which requires Joe Biden to step in and level the playing field which takes us back to Reuters, to wit:
The tech giant makes 128-layer NAND flash products in Xian, analysts said, chips that store data in devices such as smartphones and personal computers, as well as in data centres.
The facility accounts for 43% of Samsung’s global NAND flash memory production capacity and 15% of the overall global output capacity, according to TrendForce late last year.
The U.S. crackdown, if approved, could also complicate SK Hynix’s ambition to expand its presence in the NAND market where it is ranked third as of first quarter behind Samsung and Japan’s Kioxia Holdings, which was spun out of Toshiba Corp.
SK Hynix completed late last year the first phase of its $9 billion purchase of Intel’s NAND business, including its Dalian, China NAND manufacturing facility.
CHINA STRATEGIES
The move being considered by the United States is one of several recent signs of deepening tensions between Beijing and Washington over the tech sector.
Congress last week approved legislation to subsidise semiconductor production in the United States.
It bars any company that receives federal subsidies from investing in certain chip technology in China during the subsidy period.
The deepening tensions could leave Samsung and SK Hynix having to review strategies on China investments, analysts and industry sources said.
“Until now, companies tended to invest in countries like China, where costs were cheap,” said Kim Yang-jae, analyst at Daol Investment & Securities.
“That’s no longer going to be the only consideration.”
“The biggest change these potential limits will bring will be where the next chip factories are built.”
They could also face potentially diminishing returns from their multi-billion dollar China plants, which could be stuck making older-technology, less lucrative chips.
SK Hynix has not been able to upgrade its DRAM memory chip production facilities in Wuxi, China with the latest extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) chipmaking machines made by Dutch firm ASML as U.S. officials do not want advanced equipment used in the process to enter the country.
The EUV machines are used to make more advanced and smaller chips that are used in high-end devices such as smartphones.
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As Joe said in “Remarks by President Biden Before the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly” on September 21, 2021 at United Nations Headquarters in New York, New York, as to his vision of world domination by the United States under his command: That’s the idea behind the Build Back Better World.
FIFTH GRADE CIVICS LESSON:
In a Reuters article on August 3, 2022 titled “As U.S. eyes new China chip curbs, turmoil looms for global market” by Joyce Lee, it was stated as follows with respect to the power American autocrat Joe Biden now has over industry not only in America, but in the world, as well, to wit:
SK Hynix has not been able to upgrade its DRAM memory chip production facilities in Wuxi, China with the latest extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) chipmaking machines made by Dutch firm ASML as U.S. officials do not want advanced equipment used in the process to enter the country.
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Q: Keeping in mind American president Harry S. Truman’s issuance of Executive Order 10340 to seize control of the steel industries of the United State of America on April 8, 1952. by nationalizing it, which actions were found to be unconstitutional in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. et al. v. Sawyer. where does American autocrat Joe Biden today get the authority to tell Dutch firm ASML where it can and cannot sell its products?
A: Like all autocrats going back in time to at least Marius and Sulla in Rome, and coming forward in time though such modern-day autocrats as Hitler, and Stalin and Mussolini and Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin, Joe has grabbed this power out of thin air, as this power can be attained no other way.
Autocrats do not ask permission of those they rule to be an autocrat, nor do they seek permission.
They simply assume the mantle of autocrat, and as we are seeing here, then rule accordingly, finding that in our times today, as was the case in the time of Sallust, only a few prefer liberty, as for the rest, what they seek and crave is a kind master.
And so, as we see by going to a Reuters article titled “Chip and carmaker CEOs meet ahead of Biden signing” by David Shepardson on August 8, 2022, not only does American autocrat Joe Biden get to determine where the next chip factories are to be built in the world, and by whom, but more importantly, for him and the Democrats, who are to be the winners as a result of Joe’s largesse with government money which he now has to lavish on the corporations of his choice as a result of his signing into law a bill known as the Chips and Science Act, which provides more than $200 billion in taxpayer money to boost domestic production of semiconductor computer chips and reduce U.S. reliance on overseas manufacturing of the components that power nearly all facets of modern technology, and as far as Joe the Autocrat is concerned, when the government has the power to control and regulate private business as the autocrat Jow is doing with the chip industry, his government is in a position to dispense economic favors, and in power politics at the level Joe Biden plays the game, that is what the game is all about, having economic favors to dispense, so to make that happen, with his CHIP act signing, Joe is going to dominate weaker countries, whether by force, as he is doing with Russia, or economic coercion, or technological exploitation, as Joe is doing here, or disinformation, to wit:
WASHINGTON, Aug 8 (Reuters) – The heads of chipmakers GlobalFoundries and Applied Materials and carmakers Ford Motor and General Motors Co were to meet at a closed-door summit with U.S. government officials on Monday to discuss administration plans to invest in semiconductors.
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And of course it had to be to a closed-door summit with U.S. government officials on Monday to discuss administration plans to invest in semiconductors, because we, the people footing the bill, are not supposed to know what the Biden administration is really going to do with that money, and who it is going to, and how much they are getting, and what they have to give back to Joe to get that money, like hey, maybe take on Hunter Biden as a consultant, or something sweet like that, which takes us back to Reuters where we are seeing power politics being played right before our eyes as a pro like Joe Biden plays the game, to wit:
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden will sign legislation to subsidize the U.S. semiconductor industry and boost efforts to make the United States more competitive with China.
The bill provides $52 billion in subsidies for chip manufacturing and research.
It also includes an investment tax credit for chip plants estimated to be worth $24 billion.
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So, with a flourish of his pen Joe has awarded himself some serious money to play the power game with, which takes us back to Reuters for more, as follows:
The companies said the summit would bring them together with government officials to “discuss how these public investments can accelerate semiconductor and emerging technology manufacturing, support the electrification of automobiles with a ready supply of chips, including feature-rich chips, and strengthen the United States’ economy, supply chains, and national security.”
White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition William LaPlante and National Security Council official Tarun Chhabra were among officials due to attend.
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But since it is secret, we cannot know what was said, and what was promised and to whom, by whom, probably because we are deemed too stupid to know, and too unimportant as to have a need to know.
It is POWER POLITICS, afterall, and in POWER POLITICS the way Joe Biden plays the game, what the people do not know cannot come back around to hurt him, and hey, who can argue with him on that!
And before we go further in here with respect to the chaos the autocrat Joe Biden is getting set to unleash upon the world as part of his “Ultra-MAGA Great Leap Forward” as embodied in Joe’s First Five Year Plan now known to history as “Joe Biden’s America First Plan to Build America Back Better to Make America Great Again,” this as the autocrat Joe continues to grow our economy from the bottom up by hosing the lowest on the totem pole with high inflation to feed the desires of the middle class who own the businesses doing the gouging, which is growing the economy from the middle out for working families all across the country, which is something we should all be for, because it is the right thing to do, to see the madness and insanity baked into Joe Biden’s First Five Year Plan known as “Joe Biden’s ULTRA-MAGA GREAT LEAP FORWARD,” all we need do is go to a Reuters article titled “Nasdaq closes lower as chipmaker Micron’s warning renews tech rout” by Herbert Lash and Bansari Mayur Kamdar on August 9, 2022, where we have reality in the world we all live in, which reality is far, far different from the version of reality that exists in the mind of Joe Biden, as we shall see by dropping back in time to May 2, 2021 and a Cape Charles Mirror thread titled “Op-Ed: Thoughts on Incipient Bidenism in America Today” http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/op-ed-thoughts-on-incipient-bidenism-in-america-today/#comment-353588 but first, Reuters and operative reality outside of Joe Biden’s mind and Washington, D.C., as it is happening, to wit:
NEW YORK, Aug 9 (Reuters) – The Nasdaq closed down on Tuesday after a dismal forecast from Micron Technology pulled chip makers and tech stocks lower as investors await U.S. inflation data that could lead the Federal Reserve to further tighten its efforts to curb inflation.
Micron Technology Inc slid 3.7% after the memory-chipmaker cut its current-quarter revenue forecast and warned of negative free cash flow in its next quarter as demand wanes for chips in PCs and smartphones.
Micron’s dismal forecast, a day after Nvidia Corp warned of weakness in its gaming business, knocked the Philadelphia Semiconductor index down 4.57%, its biggest single-day decline since June 16 as all 30 components fell.
The index has lost 7% the past three days.
President Joe Biden signed a sweeping bill to provide $52.7 billion in subsidies for U.S. semiconductor production and research, a measure that gained bipartisan support to combat China’s investment in technology.
“It’s utterly discounted,” said Michael Shaoul, chief executive officer at Marketfield, on why chip stocks were unfazed by the bill.
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That people is what is called BIDEN-O-NOMICS, which is to take gobs of taxpayer dollars and plunge them into adding supply in a time of diminishing demand, and that in turn takes us back to May 2, 2021, and the Cape Charles Mirror thread titled “Op-Ed: Thoughts on Incipient Bidenism in America Today,” where we will clearly see that Joe Biden’s lack of judgment with respect to spending taxpayer dollars on BOONDOGGLES (waste money or time on unnecessary or questionable projects) is nothing new.
That thread started out as follows, to wit:
When I and Joe Biden both were young, assuming Joe Biden ever actually really was, young, I mean, which is not at all a given, Joe being who Joe is, a distinctly God-like being separate and apart from us mere mortals who may well have been born looking just the way he does today, white as a ghost from how pure he is in an otherworldly way, as if he came from elsewhere in the galaxy or universe and wasn’t really one of us, at all, a relevant subject we young Americans studied was known as “Stalinism,” which was the ideology and policies adopted by Stalin, based on centralization, totalitarianism, and the pursuit of communism.
Today, in our times, now that the JANUARY REVOLUTION is over and our Republic has been overthrown, and the Marxist Dictatorship of the Proletariat has been established in its place at the national level here in the United States of America with the ascension of the God-like Joe Biden into the oval office, God Help the nation, we are seeing the beginning of “Bidenism,” which like Stalinism before it, is based on based on centralization, totalitarianism, and the pursuit of communism through socialism.
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And from there, we go to THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MAY 18, 2021 AT 9:12 PM, where we have as follows, which this is all a repeat of:
Chaos is coming, people, and its name is Joe Biden!
And to flesh that thought out a bit more, let us first go back to the full transcript from President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress on 28 April 2021, where we have Joe blathering away about things he doesn’t know about and doesn’t understand, to wit:
Tonight, I come to talk about crisis — and opportunity.
About rebuilding our nation — and revitalizing our democracy.
And winning the future for America.
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Yes, people, sing hallelujah and say amen, because we are saved – Joe Biden is here and he is going to win the future for America, because of how much our Joe loves us, which takes us back to that transcript as follows:
For me, when I think about climate change, I think jobs.
Electrical workers installing 500,000 charging stations along our highways.
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Keeping that thought in mind about those 500,000 charging stations Joe Biden is going to install all across America, because that thought is essential to understanding the brick wall Joe Biden is going to slam us into face first, let us next go to a story in The Hill entitled “Governors pressure Biden to nationally phase out gas, diesel cars – A dozen states are calling on the president to phase in zero-emission vehicles” by Christian Spencer on April 30, 2021, where we learn further about the future Joe Biden is going to create, as follows:
Governors from across the country are calling on President Biden to take federal action to ensure that all new cars and trucks sold are zero-emission by no later than 2035.
The Biden administration could set vehicle admission standards under the Clean Air Act that only the electric cars could meet, The Guardian reports.
Biden already shares the same sentiment with the governors.
“[There’s] no reason why American workers can’t lead the world in the production of electric vehicles and batteries,” the president said.
Biden’s plans on ushering in new innovative ways to expand renewable energy and electric vehicles, which he promises will bring in millions of new jobs.
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And that then takes us to a CBS News story entitled “Biden says ‘the future of the auto industry is electric’ at Ford plant” by Kathryn Watson on May 18, 2021, to wit:
Dearborn, Michigan — President Biden traveled Tuesday to Dearborn, Michigan, to visit Ford’s electric vehicle plant as his administration continues to push for alternative forms of energy and transportation.
“The future of the auto industry is electric.”
“There’s no turning back,” Mr. Biden said in remarks from the auto plant, known as the Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center.
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And in one of those cosmic confluences of events associated with the Cape Charles Mirror, that thought brings me back to the Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. of Nikita Khrushchev on February 24-25, 1956, as follows:
You see what Stalin’s mania for greatness led to.
He completely lost consciousness of reality.
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Getting back to that story, it continues, thusly:
Mr. Biden has aligned himself with unions, and is pushing his multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure package, known as the American Jobs Plan.
“Right now, China is leading in this race, make no bones about it,” Mr. Biden said about the production of electric vehicles.
“They will not win this race.”
“We can’t let them.”
Mr. Biden denounced the Trump administration for not focusing enough on development of electric vehicles, or on shoring up the nation’s infrastructure.
“They announced infrastructure week!” Mr. Biden said.
“And they announced it, and announced it, and announced it, and announced it — every week for four years.”
“Didn’t do a damn thing.”
“They didn’t get the job done.”
In a fact sheet released Tuesday morning, the White House said the president’s American Jobs Plan would “accelerate our domestic EV industry by driving demand for advanced cars and trucks, reinvigorating our automotive sector and battery manufacturing, deploying a national network of chargers, and advancing our innovation capacity for the next generation of technology.”
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And with that as necessary background, before proceeding with the analysis, let me pause here for that to all sink in, and let me leave you with this thought – how long does it take to refill an electric car?
And haven’t we been here before with Joe Biden?
Anyone recall the name Fisker?
Does anyone recall that in 2009, the Obama-Biden administration agreed to pump $500 million of taxpayer stimulus cash into a foreign automotive company, Fisker, to make cars in the vice president’s home state of Delaware?
And when their green-energy boondoggle went belly up, zero cars had been manufactured in the United States — despite the hefty cost footed by America.
Fisker was awarded $528 million in federal loans to build luxurious looking, environmentally friendly automobiles in America — despite having never sold a car.
The grant was given by the Department of Energy and celebrated by Secretary Steven Chu who declared that thousands of jobs would be created.
And interestingly, bankruptcy documents related to the Fisker failure curiously listed Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, as a creditor to the automaker.
Fisker was later purchased at auction by Wanxiang, a Chinese conglomerate, after being “enticed” by Fisker creditors.
Wanxiang also has ties to Hunter Biden: The foreign company had invested $1.25 billion into a different company that was a client of Seneca Advisors, Hunter’s consulting firm.
Wheels within wheels, people!
So who will benefit from this latest Biden BOONDOGGLE?
Hunter Biden?
As we older people in America with working memories well recall, Joe Biden has an execrable record when it comes to be responsible for how public money, OUR money, is spent, as we see from that reference to Fisker above, and like the rabbit who is always being pulled out of a hat by a magician, Hunter Biden.
But before we document that part of the story further, because it needs to be documented in here, where Joe’s reckless expenditure of $52.7 billion of taxpayer money on BIDEN-ESQUE “GREEN DREAM” PIE-IN-THE-SKY PROJECTS today, like was the case with Fisker and Solyndra when he was Hussein Obama’s executive deputy president, is what is as issue, Joe’s irresponsibility with public funds, let’s stay in the present moment for a moment longer with respect to the chaos the autocrat Joe Biden is getting set to unleash upon the world as part of his “Ultra-MAGA Great Leap Forward” as embodied in Joe’s First Five Year Plan now known to history as “Joe Biden’s America First Plan to Build America Back Better to Make America Great Again,” to see more of the madness and insanity baked into Joe Biden’s First Five Year Plan known as “Joe Biden’s ULTRA-MAGA GREAT LEAP FORWARD,” by going to a Reuters article titled “Micron’s warning of weak demand rattles chip stocks” by Chavi Mehta on August 9, 2022, where we again have reality in the world we all live in, which reality is far, far different from the version of reality that exists in the mind of Joe Biden, as follows:
Aug 9 (Reuters) – Micron Technology cut its current-quarter revenue forecast on Tuesday and warned of a negative free cash flow in the coming three months as customer inventories pile up amid waning demand for chips used in PCs and smartphones.
end quotes
So what does somebody really, really smart and a real gosh-darn genuine expert on fiscal matters and economics like Joe Biden, who in his own words in his “Remarks by President Biden at Signing of H.R. 4346, ‘The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022’” on August 9, 2022 on the South Lawn of the white house told the people of America and the people of the world who dote on Joe and listen to his every word, as if they come through Joe from on high, told everybody he has always believed that America is the only nation in the world, and Joe believes this with every fiber of his being, the only nation in the world that can be defined, as Joe told Xi Jinping several years ago, by a single word, that being when the Chinese dude asked our Joe to define America for him when Joe was in China and the Chinese dude and Joe were alone on the Tibetan Plateau, and then did it by saying, “I can do it in one word, and I mean it: possibilities; in America, everything is possible; we believe every and anything is possible; it’s part of the soul of this country; I mean, it really is” do when a big chip company like Micron Technology cuts its current-quarter revenue forecast and warns of a negative free cash flow in the coming three months as customer inventories pile up amid waning demand for chips used in PCs and smartphones?
If you said, FLOOD THE MARKET WITH MORE CHIPS, you, too are a rocket scientist in economics like Joe Biden, which takes us back to Reuters for more of the reality that Joe Biden is unaware of because it is happening outside of the bubble of unreality he lives in where everything is possible and all Joe has to do is snap his fingers and it will happen, because it has to happen, because Joe is the president who makes things happen, so it better happen, or else, to wit:
The dismal forecast comes a day after Nvidia warned of weakness in its gaming business, accentuating fears of the first chip industry downturn since 2019.
That sent Micron’s shares and the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index down 5.7% and 4.3%, as investors looked past U.S. President Joe Biden signing a landmark bill for $52.7 billion in subsidies for semiconductor production and research.
Micron, which last reported negative free cash flow in 2020 during the early days of the pandemic, warned it could see significant sequential declines in revenue and margins in its first quarter due to a fall in shipments.
Surging prices have forced consumers to curb their spending on electronic gadgets, prompting production revaluations at companies sitting on excess inventory of chips and other components in anticipation of strong post-pandemic demand.
Shipments of PCs are expected to drop 9.5% this year, according to IT research firm Gartner.
That, and cooling demand for smartphones, has drawn demand-related warnings from Micron and others including Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Qualcomm) and Nvidia Corp.
Micron is seeing cloud, industrial and automotive customers also make “inventory adjustments” due to macro uncertainty, finance chief Mark Murphy said at the Keybanc Technology Leadership forum on Tuesday.
“It’s a challenging setup for this quarter.”
end quotes
Not, however, in the mind of Joe Biden, which takes us to Hunter Biden, in an investigative article by the Investigative Research Center titled “Hunter Biden Listed as Fisker Creditor, Raising Questions About Green Energy Boondoggle” by IRC Staff on June 2, 2020, where we have some necessary background history concerning Joe Biden’s fiscal irresponsibility with OUR tax dollars, to wit:
In 2009, the Obama-Biden administration agreed to pump $500 million of taxpayer stimulus cash into a foreign automotive company, Fisker, to make cars in the vice president’s home state of Delaware.
When their green-energy boondoggle went belly up, zero cars had been manufactured in the United States — despite the hefty cost footed by America.
end quotes
That was then, and now that Joe is back in power again, the same thing is happening now, all over again, which takes us back to that story, as follows:
The intricacies of the deal are tangled.
Bankruptcy documents related to the Fisker failure curiously listed Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, as a creditor to the automaker.
Fisker was later purchased at auction by Wanxiang, a Chinese conglomerate, after being “enticed” by Fisker creditors.
Wanxiang also has ties to Hunter Biden: The foreign company had invested $1.25 billion into a different company that was a client of Seneca Advisors, Hunter’s consulting firm.
Fisker was awarded $528 million in federal loans to build luxurious looking, environmentally friendly automobiles in America — despite having never sold a car.
The grant was given by the Department of Energy and celebrated by Secretary Steven Chu who declared that thousands of jobs would be created.
It has been written that Fisker’s overall marketing strategy “call[ed] out to an untapped market: moneyed Hollywood vegans, of which there plenty.”
Fiscal watchdogs were alarmed by the Obama-Biden administration’s expenditure.
One warned at the time: “This is not for average Americans.”
“This is for people to put something in their driveway that is a conversation piece.”
“It’s status symbol thing.”
end quotes
And think on those words, people, as we consider the “GREEN DREAM” PIE-IN-THE-SKY blather of Joe Biden today with respect to what his “CHIPS ACT” is supposed to accomplish today – fiscal watchdogs were alarmed by the Obama-Biden administration’s expenditure, with one warning at the time: “This is not for average Americans, this is for people to put something in their driveway that is a conversation piece, it’s status symbol thing.”
Recklessness with taxpayer dollars by Joe Biden, plain and simple, and now he is back in power to do it all over again, which takes us back to Fisker and Hunter and Joe, to wit:
The Fisker strategy also relied on large-scale government investment, which was made easier by having strong political connections.
Fisker was backed by former Vice President Al Gore and venture capitalist John Doerr, a “big-ticket” Obama donor and now a major contributor to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.
end quotes
And how about that, now will you, people – look where Joe is getting his money from!
Getting back to that story, it goes on as follows, and provides us with a template and game plan for what Joe intends to do with our taxpayer dollars today, to wit:
In February 2009, Doerr had been appointed by the Obama-Biden administration to sit on an economic recovery board.
His firm, Kleiner Perkins, managed a $100 million tech fund.
CNET reported of his appointment: “Not-so-coincidentally, Doerr has lobbied for laws at the state level – and, more recently, as part of the ‘stimulus’ proposal – that would benefit his portfolio by moving toward smart grid, solar, and other technology.”
Fisker had private clout, and soon would secure taxpayer cash.
A Biden staffer told the Wall Street Journal that he made “no direct appeals” to the agency prior to the loan’s approval.
That claim from December 2009 seems suspect based on the paper’s chronicling of events.
Delaware’s Chief of Economic Development dubbed Biden a “secret weapon” in securing federal support.
Before ruling on the loan, Department of Energy leadership was “peppered” by elected officials in the state and had “repeated discussions with Vice President Biden and his staff.”
When Secretary Chu ran into Biden at an event, he reportedly told him, “I know, I know – Fisker.”
The loan was approved five days after that conversation.
Fisker chose a shuttered factory in Delaware located 3,000 miles away from the company’s headquarters.
High Gear Media notes other disadvantages besides geography: “(It) needed expensive retooling, was far too large for the task at hand, and was ostensibly more expensive to retrofit than some other ‘old GM’ properties, such as Doraville.”
However, the selected destination had some political advantages: It was just a few miles from Biden’s house and “across the tracks from Biden Park.”
The vice president was so excited that he “inadvertently divulged” Fisker’s product plan during a speech to union members.
A press release heralded a “new chapter” for the American auto industry which he believed would help our country “reclaim its top position in the global market.”
Given that the taxpayers were funding this venture backed by his political allies, Biden sought to assure the nation that his investment was wise: “This is seed money that will return back to the American consumer in billions and billions and billions of dollars in good, new jobs.”
end quotes
And let’s leave off there for a moment as we pause for station identification so you can get to the fridge for some necessary munchies, and when we return, it will be to hear the following from the authors of that investigative report, so stay tuned:
“But not everything went according to Biden’s ‘roadmap.’”
White & Case
“President Biden Signs CHIPS and Science Act into Law”
12 August 2022
On August 9, 2022, President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act (H.R.4346), which seeks to bolster the US semiconductor supply chain and promote research and development of advanced technologies in the United States.
The Act is comprised largely of provisions extracted from the US Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) and its House alternative, the America COMPETES Act, which Congress failed to reconcile in conference negotiations this summer.
The CHIPS and Science Act encompasses the most popular provisions of the USICA and COMPETES bills, but modifies and adds to those provisions in important ways.
Key provisions and updates in the CHIPS and Science Act are as follows:
* $52.7 billion appropriation for semiconductor incentives. The bill appropriates $52.7 billion over five years to fund grants, loans, loan guarantees, and other programs to incentivize semiconductor manufacturing in the United States (as proposed in the USICA and the COMPETES Act).
* “FABS Act” investment tax credit. The bill establishes a new 25 percent tax credit for investments in semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the United States (not envisioned in the USICA or the COMPETES Act).
* Limits on expansion of manufacturing capacity in China. The bill includes new “clawback” provisions that generally prohibit beneficiaries of the CHIPS funding and investment tax credit from expanding semiconductor manufacturing in China for a period of ten years (except for manufacturing of legacy chips).
* $170 billion authorization for R&D programs. The bill authorizes nearly $170 billion in funding over five years for research and development initiatives across multiple federal agencies, roughly in line with the USICA and the COMPETES Act.
This includes a $20 billion authorization for a new technology directorate within the National Science Foundation, which will award grants to fund research and development in areas such as artificial intelligence, advanced energy, data storage, and robotics.
Financial Assistance Program for Semiconductors ($39 billion)
The CHIPS and Science Act appropriates $52.7 billion to fund semiconductor incentive programs authorized by the CHIPS for America Act of 2021.
The majority of this appropriation ($39 billion) will fund a “Financial Assistance Program” for the semiconductor industry.
This program, which the US Department of Commerce will administer, will provide Federal financial assistance to “covered entities” to incentivize “investment in facilities and equipment in the United States for the fabrication, assembly, testing, advanced packaging, production, or research and development of semiconductors, materials used to manufacture semiconductors, or semiconductor manufacturing equipment.”
Federal investment in any particular project may not exceed $3 billion, unless the Executive Branch certifies to Congress that a larger investment is necessary to:
(1) “significantly increase the proportion of reliable domestic supply of semiconductors relevant for national security and economic competitiveness that can be met through domestic production;” and
(2) “meet the needs of national security.”
Other notable changes to the Financial Assistance Program
The CHIPS and Science Act makes several other noteworthy changes to the Financial Assistance Program, including:
* Expanding the scope of the program to include upstream suppliers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment and materials used to manufacture semiconductors;
* Providing express authority for the Secretary of Commerce to provide financial assistance in the form of loans or loan guarantees (which may account for up to $6 billion of the $39 billion appropriation);
* Establishing additional eligibility criteria, including requirements that covered entities must have plans in place to identify and mitigate supply chain security risks; and
* Establishing a dedicated sub-program to provide financial assistance for assembly, testing, or packaging of semiconductors at “mature technology nodes,” and setting aside $2 billion of the total appropriation to implement this sub-program.
Other CHIPS for America Act Programs ($13.7 billion)
The bill appropriates $13.7 billion for other programs authorized by the CHIPS for America Act, including:
* $11 billion for workforce and research and development programs administered by the Department of Commerce (including the National Semiconductor Technology Center and the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program);
* $2 billion for a CHIPS for America Defense Fund, which will be used to establish a national network for microelectronics research and development;
* $500 million for a CHIPS for America International Technology Security and Innovation Fund, which will be used to coordinate with foreign government partners on semiconductor supply chain issues; and
* $200 million for a CHIPS for America Workforce and Education Fund, which will seek to promote growth of the US semiconductor workforce.
New Investment Tax Credit for Semiconductor Manufacturing
The CHIPS and Science Act establishes a new tax credit for investments in semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the United States, based on the Facilitating American-Built Semiconductors (FABS) Act introduced by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mike Crapo (R-ID).
The credit is equal to 25 percent of the value of a qualified investment in a facility for which the primary purpose is the manufacturing of semiconductors or semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this credit will result in tax expenditures of approximately $24 billion.
Research and Development, Competition, and Innovation Act
Division B of the CHIPS and Science Act, entitled the Research and Development, Competition, and Innovation Act, authorizes nearly $170 billion in funding over five years for research and development initiatives across multiple federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
This amounts to an $82.5 billion increase over the baseline of authorized funding, representing “the largest five-year investment in public R&D in the nation’s history,” according to the bill’s proponents.
The legislation covers a broad array of programs, including initiatives to fund research and development of advanced technologies, promote research security, develop standards in areas such as cybersecurity and advanced communications, and promote energy security.
Among other notable provisions in Division B, and particularly relevant to the bill’s theme of technological competition with China, the bill authorizes a $20 billion appropriation for a new “Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships” within the National Science Foundation.
The Directorate is authorized to make financial awards to private entities and other institutions (excluding “entities of concern”) for research and technology development within “key technology focus areas.”
The bill specifies ten “key technology focus areas” that are eligible for such awards:
* Artificial intelligence, machine learning, autonomy, and related advances;
* High performance computing, semiconductors, and advanced computer hardware and software;
* Quantum information science and technology;
* Robotics, automation, and advanced manufacturing;
* Natural and anthropogenic disaster prevention or mitigation;
* Advanced communications technology and immersive technology;
* Biotechnology, medical technology, genomics, and synthetic biology;
* Data storage, data management, distributed ledger technologies, and cybersecurity, including biometrics;
* Advanced energy and industrial efficiency technologies; and
* Advanced materials science.
Outlook
The CHIPS and Science Act creates significant new funding opportunities and potential tax benefits for companies exploring investments in the semiconductor supply chain and other critical technologies in the United States.
The CHIPS and Science Act also represents an important evolution of the United States’ longstanding posture regarding industrial subsidies.
The United States has long expressed concern about the market-distorting effects of industrial subsidies maintained by other countries, and has sought to address them primarily through trade enforcement and dispute settlement, new FTA disciplines, and proposed reforms to WTO rules (the latter being a focus of trilateral discussions with the EU and Japan in recent years).
More recently, the Biden Administration and Members of Congress of both parties have argued that the United States must respond to foreign subsidization of the semiconductor industry by offering commensurate subsidies of its own, as envisioned in the CHIPS and Science Act (which is expressly intended to “erase the difference with foreign subsidy regimes.”
Following the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai stated that the United States should “keep replicating this for other industries,” especially those that face “stiff competition from economies that are not structured like ours,” calling this approach “the key to American competitiveness going forward.”
This shift in the United States’ posture may further complicate efforts to advance new trade disciplines regarding industrial subsidies, and there are indications that the United States has already begun to pull back from some of those efforts.
Reuters
“Wall Street ends August with a whimper on Fed worry”
By Chuck Mikolajczak
August 31, 2022
NEW YORK, Aug 31 (Reuters) – U.S. stocks ended the month with their fourth straight daily decline on Wednesday, cementing the weakest August performance in seven years as worries about aggressive interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve persist.
Adding to pressure were declines in the technology sector, and more specifically chipmakers, after soft forecasts from Seagate and HP Inc.
The Philadelphia SE semiconductor index lost 1.15% after Seagate, down 3.54%, slashed its first-quarter earnings expectations, citing macroeconomic concerns that are forcing cloud companies and PC makers to cut inventory levels.
In addition, HP Inc fell 7.68% after it forecast downbeat quarterly and full-year profit on slowing PC sales.
FASCISM: a one party system of government in which each class has its distinct place, function, and representation in the government, but the individual is subordinated to the state and control is maintained by military forces, secret police, rigid censorship, and governmental regimentation of industry and finance.
– Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary
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Reuters
“U.S. officials order Nvidia to halt sales of top AI chips to China”
By Stephen Nellis and Jane Lanhee Lee
August 31, 2022
Aug 31 (Reuters) – Chip designer Nvidia Corp on Wednesday said that U.S. officials told it to stop exporting two top computing chips for artificial intelligence work to China, a move that could cripple Chinese firms’ ability to carry out advanced work like image recognition and hamper a business that Nvidia expects to generate $400 million in sales this quarter.
Nvidia shares fell 4% after hours.
The company said the ban, which affects its A100 and H100 chips designed to speed up machine learning tasks, could interfere with completion of developing the H100, the flagship chip Nvidia announced this year.
AMD shares were down 2% in after hours trading.
It makes similar artificial intelligence chips.
The announcement signals a major escalation of the U.S. crackdown on China’s technological capabilities as tensions bubble over the fate of Taiwan, where chips for Nvidia and almost every other major chip firm are manufactured.
Without American chips from companies like Nvidia and its rival Advanced Micro Devices, Chinese organizations will be unable to cost-effectively carry out the kind of advanced computing used for image and speech recognition, among many other tasks.
AMD did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Nvidia said it had booked $400 million in sales of the affected chips this quarter to China that could be lost if Chinese firms decide not to buy alternative Nvidia products.
It said it plans to apply for exemptions to the rule but has “no assurances” that U.S. officials will grant them.
Speaking of madness and insanity in a time of Joe Biden’s “ULTRA-MAGA GREAT LEAP FORWARD”:
Reuters
“Chip wreck: Nvidia sinks sector after U.S. restricts China sales”
By Noel Randewich
September 1, 2022
Sept 1 (Reuters) – U.S. chip stocks tumbled on Thursday, with the main semiconductor index down more than 3% after Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices said U.S. officials told them to stop exporting cutting-edge processors for artificial intelligence to China.
Nvidia’s stock plummeted 11%, on track for its biggest one-day percentage drop since 2020, while smaller rival AMD’s stock fell almost 6%.
As of mid-day, about $40 billion worth of Nvidia’s stock market value had evaporated.
The 30 companies making up the Philadelphia semiconductor index lost a combined about $100 billion worth of stock market value.
Traders exchanged over $11 billion worth of Nvidia shares, more than any other stock on Wall Street.
The restricted exports to China of two of Nvidia’s top computing chips for artificial intelligence – the H100 and A100 – could impact $400 million in potential sales to China in its current fiscal quarter, the company warned in a filing on Wednesday.
“We see an escalation in US semiconductor restrictions to China and increased volatility for the semiconductors and equipment group following NVIDIA’s update,” Citi analyst Atif Malik wrote in a research note.
The announcements also come as investors worry that the global chip industry may be heading for its first sales downturn since 2019, as rising interest rates and stuttering economies in the United States and Europe cut into demand for personal computers, smartphones and data center components.
The Philadelphia chip index has now lost almost 16% since mid-August.
It is down about 35% in 2022, on track for its worst calendar-year performance since 2009.
And while we are on the subject of a “planned central economy” by people in Washington, D.C. who themselves have never worked a real job in their lives, which includes Joe Biden, this Washington Examiner article titled “Obama’s ‘car of the future’ goes kaput” by Philip Wegmann on November 26, 2018, gives us some possible insights into how Joe’s subsidizing of the chip fab industry with massive amounts of taxpayer dollars might go, to wit:
It came with a turbocharged four-cylinder engine, churned out about 140 horsepower, and made upwards 40 mpg highway.
What’s more, the Chevy Cruze was the only compact sedan to come with a presidential seal of approval.
When a prototype of the 2011 model rolled off the assembly line, then President Barack Obama put his signature on the hood writing that the Cruze was “the car of the future.”
But the future lasted only seven years.
Responding to slumping sales, General Motors announced plans to push the Cruze out of their showrooms and off of a cliff.
The Motor City has learned the hard way that what was good for Obama’s green agenda wasn’t good for GM.
Fuel efficiency made the Cruze a poster child of that president’s energy legacy.
If Detroit could make a car capable of making the round trip between New York City and Washington, D.C. on a single tank of gas (the Cruze comes standard with a 13.7 gallon gas tank and those cities are 220 miles apart), then the automaker could make higher fuel economy standards.
Obama wanted higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, and his administration mandated a 54.5 mpg standard for cars and light-duty trucks by model year 2025.
Consumers did not, however, want the Cruze.
Sales were never stellar and more were sold in China than in the United States.
And when President Trump reversed the Obama-era fuel standards, sales plummeted even further.
Automotive News reports that sales of the Cruze dropped 26 percent through last March.
Soon they will free-fall.
A freshened up 2019 Cruze goes on sale in the fall for a final time.
Soon after, the plant in Lordstown, Ohio, that makes them will cease production.
end quotes
Is there possibly a moral to that story?
Something along the lines of do not put idiots who know nothing about how the economy really works in charge of the economy they know nothing about?
And are there real-world consequences for real working class people in America when all these “GREEN DREAMS” and GRANDIOSE SCHEMES for a GREEN ECONOMY of shallow thinkers like Hussein Obama and Joe Biden who are incapable, due to towering arrogance and megalomania, of seeing that their false promises of “good paying jobs” have real-world consequences for those whose lives they have disrupted when their schemes and dreams go BUST?
Let’s go back in time to circa 2018, where we have this from the Washington Post on that very subject, to wit:
LORDSTOWN, Ohio — Scott Mezzapeso had to do something last month he never imagined: call his ex-wife and warn her that he might not be able to pay child support on time.
Mezzapeso has a tattoo of his daughter on his left arm and rarely misses her high school softball games, but money has become extremely tight.
General Motors is shuttering its plant here, and Mezzapeso is one of roughly 5,400 casualties.
Mezzapeso earned $22 an hour with good benefits at Magna, a GM supplier that made seats for the Chevy Cruze, but he was laid off last summer as the auto giant scaled back Cruze production and suppliers did the same.
Now he makes $11 an hour working part time at Bruno Bros. Pizza, the only job he has found after months of sending out his résumé.
end quotes
Meanwhile if we check out the net worth of every one of Joe Biden’s cabinet members, they are well in excess of a million dollars.
If Joe’s green dreams go bust today, because like with Fisker and Solyndra back when, they are ill-conceived and not at all well thought out, being based on Joe’s belief in his infallibility of judgment that doesn’t require any thinking beyond Joe’s belief that it is the right thing to do, and yet more American workers get tossed out of their employment, because the federal government will no longer subsidize it, will any of his cabinet members even notice?
Will their families have to go without meals, I wonder?
Will Joe?
Ultranationalism or extreme nationalism is an extreme form of nationalism in which a country asserts or maintains detrimental hegemony, supremacy, or other forms of control over other nations (usually through violent coercion) to pursue its specific interests.
ultranationalism: extreme devotion to or advocacy of the interests of a nation, especially regardless of the effect on any other nations.
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Can the isolationist policies of an ultra-nationalist fool destroy the economy of the nation the ultranationalist fool is the supposed leader of?
Can the blindness of the ultra-nationalist fool to the repercussions of the fool’s ultra-nationalist policies redound (come back upon; rebound on; as in “his sins redounded upon the heads of his people”) upon those who have him as their leader?
Are we about to find out that answer in spades?
Can Joe Biden single-handedly bring down America with his stupid ultra-nationalism?
Can Joe Biden take on the rest of the world to make them small in his bid to Make America Great Again, by isolating America from the rest of the world to make everything here?
And does the world really need us, or can it make out quite fine on its own without us?
Let’s see what’s brewing in that regard:
Reuters
“Analysis: U.S. ban on Nvidia, AMD chips seen boosting Chinese rivals”
By Jane Lanhee Lee and Stephen Nellis
September 8, 2022
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 8 (Reuters) – The U.S. ban on exports to China of Nvidia and AMD’s flagship artificial intelligence chips will create new business opportunities for domestic startups jockeying for a piece of China’s fast-growing data center chip market, industry executives and analysts told Reuters.
The ban is part of a longer effort by the U.S. government to crack down on U.S. contributions to Chinese artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, or supercomputing.
Last year, U.S. officials put seven Chinese supercomputing entities on an economic blacklist, and last week they banned Nvidia and AMD’s chips from export to China “to keep advanced technologies out of the wrong hands.”
On Thursday, an independent group that measures artificial intelligence speeds published new data that can help back up the claims of little-known Chinese startup Shanghai Biren Intelligent Technology Co that its latest chip has bested the performance of one of the high-end chips banned by the U.S. government.
The milestone is viewed as an opening for Chinese domestic chip companies to service Chinese customers cut off from access to U.S. chips, experts said.
The promising performance rankings come after years of financing and development from Chinese startups and venture firms, including several investors from the U.S., to create domestic alternatives to Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc chips.
The rise of AI chip startups in China could upset plans by the U.S. to slow down China’s development of computing tools needed for military applications such as designing nuclear weapons.
Biren, founded by alumni of Chinese tech giant Alibaba and Nvidia, has publicly said it would focus on selling its BR100 chip to private data center and cloud customers.
Jack Dongarra, a distinguished professor of computer science who helps lead the Top500 ranking of the fastest supercomputers says he’s seen this scenario play out before.
“The U.S. embargoed Intel chips from going to specific places in China that are and were developing high performance computers,” he said.
“The result was that China designed its chips for its supercomputers.”
CCS Insight chip analyst Wayne Lam said Biren could be in for a “success story, having demonstrated this capability and now having this business opportunity fall on them”.
Also active in developing Nvidia alternatives are Chinese firms like Cambricon, Alibaba Group’s PingTouGe, Iluvatar CoreX, Denglin Technology, Moore Threads, Vastai Technologies and MetaX.
Data firm PitchBook shows that those top startups alone have raised $2.5 billion in recent years, including from Shanghai government-backed fund Shanghai Guosheng Group and Hillhouse Capital, which counts several U.S. pension funds and Yale University as limited partners.
Other investors include the Chinese entities of big-name Silicon Valley venture capital firms like Sequoia China and Lightspeed China Partners.
end quotes
So goofy old Joe Biden thinks that he is going to crush the Chinese by shutting them out of access to U.S. made products?
Does Joe think that is going to cripple them, somehow?
What a fool!
But, hey, he is the president!
So he gets to say who wins and who loses, and in this case, I don’t see the losers being the Chinese.
So who does that leave left?
And before we can move along here as we continue to analyze the ramifications to our American economy as a result of Joe Biden’s ultra-nationalism and isolationism here, as well as his authoritarianism, we need to get this following into the record as essential background as Joe pursues his “ULTRA-MAGA GREAT LEAP FORWARD” to make America into the chip manufacturing capital of the world, to wit:
The Washington Post
“Post Politics Now: ‘Future of the chip industry is going to be made in America,’ Biden says in Ohio”
John Wagner, Mariana Alfaro
9 September 2022
Today, President Biden, during a visit to the battleground state of Ohio, pledged that the $280 billion Chips and Science Act, passed by Congress in July, would transform the U.S. semiconductor industry.
“The industrial Midwest is back,” Biden said as he spoke at a groundbreaking ceremony for Intel’s new $20 billion manufacturing facility near Columbus, Ohio.
“Folks, the future of the chip industry is going to be made in America,” Biden said at an event that drew politicians from both parties, including Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), as they celebrated a bipartisan legislative achievement and a major economic development project for the region.
The ultra-nationalist Joe Biden declared economic war on Russia, and the result is the cratering of the economies of Joe’s hapless allies in Europe.
Now the ultra-nationalist Joe Biden is escalating his wars against other nations whose economies he wants to destroy by waging economic war against China, as we have been following in here, as Joe works to impose a one party system of government in America where control is maintained by, among other factors, governmental regimentation of industry and finance.
With respect to the economic warfare the ultra-nationalist Joe Biden is waging against Chine, Reuters gives us the latest in this article titled “Exclusive: Biden to hit China with broader curbs on U.S. chip and tool exports” by Karen Freifeld and Alexandra Alper on September 12, 2022, as follows:
WASHINGTON, Sept 11(Reuters) – The Biden administration plans next month to broaden curbs on U.S shipments to China of semiconductors used for artificial intelligence and chipmaking tools, several people familiar with the matter said.
The Commerce Department intends to publish new regulations based on restrictions communicated in letters earlier this year to three U.S. companies — KLA Corp, Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The letters, which the companies publicly acknowledged, forbade them from exporting chipmaking equipment to Chinese factories that produce advanced semiconductors with sub-14 nanometer processes unless the sellers obtain Commerce Department licenses.
The rules would also codify restrictions in Commerce Department letters sent to Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices last month instructing them to halt shipments of several artificial intelligence computing chips to China unless they obtain licenses.
Some of the sources said the regulations would likely include additional actions against China.
The regulations could potentially apply to companies trying to challenge Nvidia and AMD’s dominance in artificial intelligence chips.
Intel Corp and startups like Cerebras Systems are targeting the same advanced computing markets.
Intel said it is closely monitoring the situation, while Cerebras declined to comment.
One source said the rules could also impose license requirements on shipments to China of products that contain the targeted chips.
Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Super Micro Computer make data center servers that contain Nvidia’s A100 chip.
Dell and HPE said they were monitoring the situation, while Super Micro Computer did not respond to a request for comment.
‘CHOKE POINT’
The planned action comes as the President Joe Biden’s administration has sought to thwart China’s advances by targeting technologies where the United States still maintains dominance.
“The strategy is to choke off China and they have discovered that chips are a choke point.”
“They can’t make this stuff, they can’t make the manufacturing equipment,” said Jim Lewis a technology expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“That will change.”
U.S. officials have reached out to allies to lobby them to enact similar policies so that foreign companies would not be able to sell technology to China that American firms would be barred from shipping, two of the sources said.
So, as the ultra-nationalist Joe Biden continues to impose his one party system of government in America on us, a one-party system where control is maintained by, among other factors, governmental regimentation of industry and finance, what he is doing is telling American companies where there markets are, and where their markets are not.
So effectively, Joe Biden, in his ultra-nationalism, is effectively removing China as a marketplace for American chip makers.
Which raises the question of what kind of marketplace was it, in terms of sales volume.
And for that answer, let us go to an article by a gentleman named Julian Busch of China Certification Corporation, which is people who actually deal with China and thus, know the market over there, keeping in mind that this was published in 2020, to wit:
This year China will import computer chips worth at least 300 billion US dollars.
end quotes
So, two years ago, in 2020, the Chinese marketplace for US chips was worth at least $300 billion dollars, and by effectively closing the market to American companies, Joe, the ultra-nationalist, is throwing that market up to competitors outside the US, plus, it gives the Chinese an incentive to go it alone, which they are most certainly capable of doing, although Joe Biden, who looks down on the Chinese as somehow inferior, doesn’t believe that is possible, as if they only could be made here in America.
Going back to that article, we have more, as follows:
According to a spokesman for the Chinese Industry Association, this is the third year in a row and a sign of the country’s dependence on foreign know-how despite efforts to strengthen domestic manufacturing expertise.
end quotes
Again, people – 2020!
And if they needed more incentive other than cost for strengthening their own domestic manufacturing expertise, the ultra-nationalist authoritarian Joe Biden is providing it for them, at the expense of American interests.
Going back to that story:
Wei Shaojun, the vice president of the Chinese Semiconductor Industry Association, said at a conference that China is currently the world’s largest importer of computer chips and other semiconductors.
In 2013, the value of chip imports to China was more than 200 billion US dollars, in 2018 and 2019 more than 300 billion US dollars, and a similar amount is expected for the current year 2020.
Wei estimates that about half of all computer chips are processed into products that are then exported.
In the past, China has invested enormous sums in research and the development of a domestic semiconductor industry.
The recently flared up dispute between the USA and the Chinese technology group Huawei increases the pressure on local companies.
The Trump government issued a decree last month that prevents companies from exporting certain computer chips containing proprietary technology from the US.
Instead, a separate license is now required for export.
Industry insiders suspect that this move is intended to make it more difficult for Huawei to gain access to standard computer chips manufactured in the USA, disrupt the global supply chain and attack Huawei’s leadership in the smartphone market.
China’s efforts to build a local and independent semiconductor industry are led by, among others, the largest domestic chip manufacturer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.
The company plans to increase its equity and spending but is experiencing difficulties with technologies for production due to lack of know-how.
Industry President Wei warned that tensions between the US and China could further intensify and warned that the semiconductor industry has a strong global linkage and that in the event of disruptions all parties involved would be negatively affected.
end quotes
Having caused the cratering of the European economy in his efforts to destroy Putin and Russia, will Joe destroy our economy next as he seeks to destroy the economy of China?
Stay tuned!
And as the ultra-nationalist autocrat Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. out of an extreme sense of paranoia that China is going to win the race for the 21st Century, which race does not exist anywhere outside of Joe’s scrambled mind, continues closing off outside markets to American chip manufacturers whose business models were built around growing foreign markets, is he going to use OUR tax dollars to compensate them for lost business?
Or is he going to find them new markets to replace China, maybe Uganda, for example, or Somalia?
In the meantime, since we are on the subject of Joe’s extreme paranoia about China winning the race for the 21st Century, when it is really Joe’s turn for it, we have from Reuters, as follows:
“U.S. investments in foreign chip firms a potential concern, White House says”
By Alexandra Alper
September 14, 2022
WASHINGTON, Sept 14 (Reuters) – U.S. investment in foreign chip companies is a potential concern for the Biden administration, a White House official said on Wednesday, but he stressed it has not yet made a final decision on a potential mechanism regulating U.S. investments in China.
National Security Council official Peter Harrell heralded the administration’s efforts to kick-start U.S. chipmaking with $52 billion in subsidies through a recent law and its export control policies, which have sought to curb shipments of specialized chips and chipmaking tools to China.
Sources familiar with the matter say the White House has been working on an executive order that would allow the U.S. government to review and block certain American investments in high-tech sectors abroad, especially in China, which could harm U.S. national security.
end quotes
Given OUR history, this is so ridiculous, but oh so very Joe Biden, and here I am referring back in time to March 9, 2000 and the Full Text of Bill Clinton’s Speech on China Trade Bill on March 8 at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University, as recorded by the Federal News Service, a transcription company, which policies the ultra-nationalist autocrat Biden and his team of mouth-breathers and bottom feeders and lickspittles and sycophants are overturning out of Joe’s abject fear of losing the race for the 21st Century, to wit:
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I also want to say, President Brody and Dean Wolfowitz, how much I appreciate the involvement of Johns Hopkins and the School for Advanced International Studies in China, in particular, at this moment in history, and for giving me the chance to come here and talk about what is one of the most important decisions America has made in years.
Last fall, as all of you know, the United States signed the agreement to bring China into the W.T.O. on terms that will open its market to American products and investments.
Again, I want to emphasize what has already been said.
Congress will not be voting on whether China will join the W.T.O.
Congress can only decide whether the United States will share in the economic benefits of China joining the W.T.O.
A vote against P.N.T.R. will cost America jobs as our competitors in Europe, Asia and elsewhere capture Chinese markets that we otherwise would have served.
end quotes
And pay strict attention to that last sentence about “as our competitors in Europe, Asia and elsewhere capture Chinese markets that we otherwise would have served,” because that is as true today as it was back then, even if these morons that comprise the Biden Regime are unaware of it, due to arrogance which blinds them to reality.
Getting back to Bill Clinton in 2000, he continues as follows, and note that unlike the paranoid Biden, Bill Clinton did not fear China would win the race for the 21st Century, precisely because Bill know the destructive nature of such a race, and wished to avoid it where the ultranationalist autocrat Biden actively seeks conflict and new enemies to add to his long list of enemies of America, to wit:
Supporting China’s entry into the W.T.O., however, is about more than our economic interests; it is clearly in our larger national interest.
end quotes
So before it was against our national interests, it was in our national interests, which again takes us back to Bill, to wit:
It represents the most significant opportunity that we have had to create positive change in China since the 1970’s, when President Nixon first went there, and later in the decade when President Carter normalized relations.
I am working as hard as I can to convince Congress and the American people to seize this opportunity.
For a long time now, the United States has debated its relationship with China.
Through all the changes, particularly of the last century, and like all human beings everywhere, we see this relationship through the prism of our own experience.
In the early 1900’s, most Americans saw China either through the eyes of traders seeking new markets, or missionaries seeking new converts.
During World War II, China was our ally; during the Korean War, our adversary.
At the dawn of the Cold War, when I was a young boy beginning to study such things, it was a cudgel in a political battle: “Who lost China?”
Later it was a counterweight to the Soviet Union, and now, in some people’s eyes, it’s a caricature.
Will it be the next great capitalist tiger, with the biggest market in the world, or the world’s last great communist dragon and a threat to stability in Asia?
Through all the changes in China and the changes in our perceptions of China, there has been one constant.
We understand that America has a profound stake in what happens in China and how China relates to the rest of the world.
That’s why, for 30 years, every president, without regard to party, has worked for a China that contributes to the stability of Asia, that is open to the world, that upholds the rule of law at home and abroad.
Of course, the path that China takes to the future is a choice China will make.
We cannot control that choice; we can only influence it.
But we must recognize that we do have complete control over what we do.
We can work to pull China in the right direction, or we can turn our backs and almost certainly push it in the wrong direction.
end quotes
And there is exactly what this idiot Biden is doing, which once again takes us back to the rational counterpoint of Bill Clinton, to wit:
The W.T.O. agreement will move China in the right direction.
It will advance the goals America has worked for in China for the past three decades.
And of course, it will advance our own economic interests.
Economically, this agreement is the equivalent of a one-way street.
It requires China to open its markets — with a fifth of the world’s population, potentially the biggest markets in the world — to both our products and services in unprecedented new ways.
All we do is to agree to maintain the present access which China enjoys.
Chinese tariffs, from telecommunications products to automobiles to agriculture, will fall by half or more over just five years.
For the first time, our companies will be able to sell and distribute products in China made by workers here in America without being forced to relocate manufacturing to China, sell through the Chinese government, or transfer valuable technology — for the first time.
We’ll be able to export products without exporting jobs.
Meanwhile, we’ll get valuable new safeguards against any surges of imports from China.
We’re already preparing for the largest enforcement effort ever given for a trade agreement.
If Congress passes P.N.T.R., we reap these rewards.
If Congress rejects it, our competitors reap these rewards.
Again, we must understand the consequences of saying no.
If we don’t sell our products to China, someone else will step into the breach, and we’ll spend the next 20 years wondering why in the wide world we handed over the benefits we negotiated to other people.
end quotes
And wow, people talk about Bill Clinton looking into the future and seeing an idiot like Joe Biden coming along to undo all that effort and thereby hand over the benefits negotiated by people like Bill Clinton to other people in other countries because of Joe Biden’s ultra-nationalistic policies.
And here we are back to this existential question confronting us all as American citizens, as we watch Joe Biden sending OUR national debt through the ceiling, to wit: So what does somebody really, really smart and a real gosh-darn genuine expert on fiscal matters and economics like Joe Biden do when a big chip company like Micron Technology cuts its current-quarter revenue forecast and warns of a negative free cash flow in the coming three months as customer inventories pile up amid waning demand for chips used in PCs and smartphones?
If you said, SPEND GOBS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS TO FLOOD THE MARKET WITH EVEN MORE CHIPS, you, too are a rocket scientist in economics like Joe Biden, which takes us to Reuters for more of the reality that Joe Biden is unaware of because it is happening outside of the bubble of unreality he lives in where everything is possible and all Joe has to do is snap his fingers and it will happen, because it has to happen, because Joe is the president who makes things happen, so it better happen, or else, to wit:
Reuters
“AMD revenue warning signals deep chip slump; shares dive 4%”
By Yuvraj Malik and Jane Lanhee Lee
October 6, 2022
Oct 6 (Reuters) – Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc on Thursday provided third-quarter revenue estimates that were about a billion dollars less than previously forecast, signaling the chip slump could be much worse than expected.
AMD shares dropped 4% in after hours trading, dragging down shares of Nvidia Corp and Intel Corp by over 2%.
“The PC market weakened significantly in the quarter,” Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su said in a statement, adding that macroeconomic conditions drove PC demand lower than expected.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which tracks prices of major silicon-producing and allied businesses, has fallen 36.4% this year so far, compared to a 41.2% rise in 2021.
The company said it expects third-quarter revenue of about $5.6 billion.
That compares with its forecast in August of $6.7 billion, plus or minus $200 million.
AMD is the latest chipmaker to be hit by the sector’s slump.
Last week memory chip maker Micron Technology warned of tougher times and said it was cutting its capex investments in fiscal 2023 by over 30% to a total of $8 billion.
Nvidia Corp and Intel Corp both delivered much worse than expected earnings in their latest reports.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the term “economic warfare” means the use of, or the threat to use, economic means against a country in order to weaken its economy and thereby reduce its political and military power.
Joe Biden has been waging economic warfare against Putin and Russia for some time now, trying to effect those goals, and only managing to destroy the economies of his hapless allies instead, and now, as if that is not enough, Joe is expanding his economic warfare to China, as we see in a Reuters article titled “U.S. aims to hobble China’s chip industry with sweeping new export rules” by Stephen Nellis, Karen Freifeld and Alexandra Alper on October 7, 2022, to wit:
Oct 7 (Reuters) – The Biden administration on Friday published a sweeping set of export controls, including a measure to cut China off from certain semiconductor chips made anywhere in the world with U.S. equipment, vastly expanding its reach in its bid to slow Beijing’s technological and military advances.
end quotes
Going back to economic warfare, because in this time of the “ULTRA MAGA BUILD AMERICA BACK BETTER BY DESTROYING THE COMPETITION” policy of the American autocrat Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior, we truly need to understand the concept, economic warfare also includes the use of economic means to compel an adversary to change its policies or behaviour or to undermine its ability to conduct normal relations with other countries, with some common means of economic warfare being trade embargoes, boycotts, sanctions, tariff discrimination, the freezing of capital assets, the suspension of aid, the prohibition of investment and other capital flows, and expropriation.
As American autocrat Joe Biden is doing with Russia, and now China, countries engaging in economic warfare, that being Joe Biden, seek to weaken an adversary’s economy, that being Russia, and now China, by denying the adversary access to necessary physical, financial, and technological resources or by otherwise inhibiting its ability to benefit from trade, financial, and technological exchanges with other countries.
Economic warfare consisting of blockades and the interception of contraband among belligerents has been practiced since before the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) in ancient Greece.
In modern times, its uses have broadened to include putting pressure on neutral countries from which enemy countries could obtain supplies and denying potential enemies goods that might contribute to their war-making ability.
The effectiveness of economic warfare depends on a number of factors, including the capacity of the adversary to produce the restricted goods internally or to acquire them from other countries.
Which brings us back to Reuters for more on Joe Biden’s economic war with China, to wit:
The raft of measures could amount to the biggest shift in U.S. policy toward shipping technology to China since the 1990s.
If effective, they could hobble China’s chip manufacturing industry by forcing American and foreign companies that use U.S. technology to cut off support for some of China’s leading factories and chip designers.
“This will set the Chinese back years,” said Jim Lewis, a technology and cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington D.C.-based think tank, who said the policies harken back to the tough regulations of the height of the Cold War.
“China isn’t going to give up on chipmaking … but this will really slow them (down).”
In a briefing with reporters on Thursday previewing the rules, senior government officials said many of the measures were aimed at preventing foreign firms from selling advanced chips to China or supplying Chinese firms with tools to make their own advanced chips.
They conceded, however, that they had not secured any promises that allied nations would implement similar measures and that discussions with those nations are ongoing.
“We recognize that the unilateral controls we’re putting into place will lose effectiveness over time if other countries don’t join us,” one official said.
“And we risk harming U.S. technology leadership if foreign competitors are not subject to similar controls.”
end quotes
And let me stop right there to let that last sentence sink in, because it happens to be OUR collective futures that this out-of-control autocrat Joe Biden is gambling with as he tries to with the WAR FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, which war, like the SOUL OF AMERICA Joe is also trying to win the war for, exists only in the fevered imagination of American autocrat Joesph Robinette, Biden, Junior.
Reuters
“Chip industry grapples with new U.S. curbs on China sales”
By Stephen Nellis and Jane Lanhee Lee
Oct 7 (Reuters) – Companies around the world on Friday began to wrestle with the impact of wide-ranging U.S. curbs on selling chips and chip manufacturing equipment to China.
The sweeping rules have hit chip stocks, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index falling nearly 6% by the end of the day.
American semiconductor equipment makers Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp were all down more than 4%.
American officials on Friday published a sweeping set of rules that restrict the export of some U.S.-made semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China, but provided exemptions for companies from the United States and its allies to seek a license.
Officials on Friday also introduced rules against selling a broad swath of chips for any use in “supercomputer” systems in China.
U.S. companies Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc both said last month they had been told to stop exporting their top-tier chips to China.
The rules define a supercomputer as any system with 100 or more petaflops of so-called double precision computing power, or 200-plus petaflops of single precision computing power, within a 41,600 cubic feet area.
A petaflop is a measure of a computer’s processing speed.
So, okay, people.
Once again, as we watch Joe Biden, a real economical genius if there ever was one, sending OUR national debt through the ceiling, let us ask ourselves this pertinent question with respect to the BILLIONS of tax payers dollars Joe Biden is spending on CHIP FABS to make more and more chips here in the US, to wit: What does somebody really, really smart and a real gosh-darn genuine expert on fiscal matters and economics like Joe Biden do when a big chip company like Micron Technology cuts its current-quarter revenue forecast and warns of a negative free cash flow in the coming three months as customer inventories pile up amid waning demand for chips used in PCs and smartphones?
If you said, PLOW GOBS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS INTO THE INDUSTRY TO FLOOD THE MARKET WITH EVEN MORE CHIPS, you, too are a rocket scientist in economics like Joe Biden, which takes us to TheStreet for more of the reality that Joe Biden is unaware of because it is happening outside of the bubble of unreality he lives in where everything is possible and all Joe has to do is snap his fingers and it will happen, because it has to happen, because Joe is the president who makes things happen, so it better happen, or else, to wit:
TheStreet
“The Bad Year of Chipmakers AMD, Nvidia and Intel Turns Into a Nightmare”
By Luc Olinga
8 October 2022
Semiconductor manufacturers’ valuations have plummeted.
It’s a bad dream that slowly turned into a nightmare.
And this nightmare doesn’t seem to want to end.
The year 2022 has been a painful journey for semiconductor manufacturers.
Following the example of AMD, Nvidia and Intel, which are the three main players in the sector, 2022 is a year to forget.
Their valuations are in recession.
Advanced Micro Devices currently has a market value of $94.4 billion, which is a decrease of at least $83 billion compared to December 31, 2021.
The AMD stock price has fallen 59.4% during this period.
Nvidia, which was once in the top 10 of the most valuable companies in the world was ejected from this club.
The chipmaker ranks now 21st, as its market capitalization has shrunk by $431 billion.
Indeed, at the start of 2022, the Nvidia’s market value was approximately $732 billion.
It is now only $301 billion.
It’s a disaster for the shareholders of the group.
As for Intel, the group of microprocessors has seen its market value melt from $101 billion from January to $105.6 billion at last check.
Intel shares fell 49% during this period.
Micron Technology’s valuation fell $44 billion in just over nine months to $58.4 billion.
The company’s stock fell for its part by 43%.
Finally, Qualcomm posted a market value of $135.8 billion, down more than $66 billion since January.
The stock price fell 33%.
In all, the semiconductor manufacturers whose chips power almost all our electronic devices, our computers, most vehicles, the gigantic data centers of companies, have lost more than $725 billion in market value combined since January.
end quotes
So think about how safe OUR tax dollars are going to be as Joe Biden spends them to build even more chip-making capacity into a shrinking marketplace, that is being more constricted by Joe Biden closing off external markets, which takes us back to that article for more, as follows:
And this stock market bloodbath will continue if we are to believe what AMD just said.
The group published preliminary results on October 7 for the quarter that just ended.
Revenue is expected to be $5.6 billion, significantly lower than the original forecast of $6.7 billion “plus or minus $200 million,” the firm said in a press release.
“Preliminary results reflect lower than expected client segment revenue, resulting from reduced processor shipments due to a weaker than expected PC market and significant inventory correction actions across the PC supply chain,” AMD said.
Basically, demand for PCs has slowed sharply, which is therefore affecting microprocessor manufacturers like AMD.
It also seems to suggest that PC manufacturers are finding themselves with large inventories.
AMD is also making a little less money on its products as margins have been squeezed.
The company explained that this disappointing figure is due to the fact that the group had to adjust its prices in the face of a drop in demand for processors, and because it tried to liquidate its inventories in the graphics business in particular.
“The PC market weakened significantly in the quarter,” said AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su.
“While our product portfolio remains very strong, macroeconomic conditions drove lower than expected PC demand and a significant inventory correction across the PC supply chain.”
Semiconductor manufacturers are impacted, like the rest of the technology groups, by fears of recession which are discouraging businesses and consumers from spending.
The sector is also suffering from the war for control of technology between the United States and China.
The Biden administration has just issued new directives aimed at drying up Beijing’s supply of microchips used in advanced computing and military applications.
The Department of Commerce has indeed published two new rules that limit American manufacturers from selling their chips to Chinese companies on a blacklist.
“BIS [Bureau of Industry and Security] is expanding controls on transactions involving items for supercomputer and semiconductor manufacturing end uses, for example, this rule expands the scope of foreign-produced items subject to license requirements for twenty-eight existing entities on the Entity List that are located in China,” said the Biden administration.
end quotes
So when Joe builds all these new Chip Fabs with taxpayer dollars, who is Joe going to sell all those chips to?
Or will he deal with that bridge when he has to cross it, as always?
Reuters
“Nasdaq registers lowest close since July 2020; chips stocks fall”
By Caroline Valetkevitch
October 10, 2022
NEW YORK, Oct 10 (Reuters) – U.S. stocks fell on Monday, with the Nasdaq posting its lowest close since July 2020, as investors worried about the impact of higher interest rates and pulled out of chipmakers after the United States announced restrictions aimed at hobbling China’s semiconductor industry.
The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index dropped 3.5% after the Biden administration published a set of export controls on Friday, including a measure to cut China off from certain semiconductor chips made anywhere in the world with U.S. equipment.
Shares of Nvidia Corp fell 3.4%, while Qualcomm Inc, Micron Technology Inc and Advanced Micro Devices also ended lower.
Yes, indeed, madness and insanity in a time of Joe Biden as Joe takes on all the world to prove that when it comes to BIG DOGS on the world stage, Joe is the very biggest of them all:
Reuters
“Exclusive: KLA to stop sales and service to China to comply with U.S. export curbs”
By Josh Horwitz
October 11, 2022
SHANGHAI, Oct 11 (Reuters) – U.S. chip toolmaker KLA Corp will cease offering some supplies and services from Wednesday to China-based customers including South Korea’s SK Hynix in compliance with recent U.S. regulations, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.
The move underscores huge business headwinds facing chipmakers and chip equipment makers around the world, as the Biden administration published a sweeping set of export controls on Friday aimed at slowing China’s progress in advanced chip manufacturing.
China is KLA’s largest geographic market, bringing in $2.66 billion in sales, or nearly 30% of its total revenue in the last fiscal year that ended in June, according to the company’s financial filings.
Under new U.S. regulations released on Friday, companies looking to supply Chinese chipmakers with advanced manufacturing equipment must first obtain a licence from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The source, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, said staff in China received an email from KLA’s legal department stating that effective 11:59 p.m. local time (1559 GMT) on Tuesday, the company shall stop sales and service to “advanced fabs” in China for technology of NAND chips with 128 layers or more, and DRAM chips 18nm and below, and advanced logic chips.
The source added that the company would also cease supplying China chip plants owned by Intel and SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker.
SK Hynix reiterated its stance that it would seek a license under new U.S. export control rules for equipment to keep operating its factories in China.
Intel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
China’s two leading memory chipmakers – Yangtze Memory Technologies Co Ltd (YMTC), Changxin Memory Technologies Inc (CXMT) – and contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) are among the major customers affected by the U.S. export control.
Shares in KLA tumbled nearly 5% on Monday, hit by the latest U.S. export control measures.
Along with Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc, KLA is among top U.S. toolmakers now required to halt shipments to wholly Chinese-owned factories producing advanced chips.
These Biden-istas are insane!
There is no other word for it!
Unable to build themselves, they are obsessed with destroying what others have built, regardless of the harm they cause to the civilized world, and if they have to totally upend global markets to cause harm to Russia, who Joe Biden is terrified of along with China, they are ready and willing to do so, to wit:
Reuters
“U.S. may block Russian aluminum imports – source”
By Trevor Hunnicutt
October 12, 2022
WASHINGTON, Oct 12 (Reuters) – The Biden administration is weighing restricting imports of Russian aluminum as it charts possible responses to Moscow’s military escalation in Ukraine, a person briefed on the conversations told Reuters.
Such a move, which has not been finalized, would likely boost global prices for the metal used in a wide range of consumer products and could reverse a previous White House stance that such sanctions could wreak havoc on global markets.
And people wonder why we have price inflation:
Reuters
“Aluminium spikes 7% after report of U.S. ban of Russian supplies”
Reuters
October 12, 2022
LONDON, Oct 12 (Reuters) – Aluminium prices on the London Metal Exchange (LME) soared on Wednesday after Bloomberg reported that the United States was considering a ban on Russian aluminium in response to the conflict in Ukraine.
Benchmark aluminium was up 3.3% at $2,309 a tonne at 1612 GMT after briefly spiking 7.3% to $2,400 a tonne.
The Biden administration is considering raising tariffs on Russian aluminum to levels so punitive they would effectively ban Russian aluminium producer Rusal, Bloomberg said, citing unnamed people familiar with the decision-making.
The White House and the Treasury Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
Rusal is the world’s largest aluminium producer outside China, supplying the world with 6% of its needs estimated at around 70 million tonnes this year.
It too did not immediately respond to request for comment.
A ban would almost certainly send prices soaring.
After the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Rusal and the LME barred its metal in 2018, aluminium prices rose 30% over the course of a few days.
The LME last week launched a discussion paper on the possibility of banning Russian aluminium, nickel and copper from being traded and stored in its system.
Sources in the metal industry say there is concern that Russian metal producers will be unable to sell their metal and will deliver it to registered LME warehouses, which could distort prices.
And seriously, people, how can any sane and rational person think anything other than this is madness and insanity, what Joe Biden is doing to the global economy, which like it or not, we happen to be a part of, BY CHOICE, with his ULTRA-NATIONALISTIC AMERICA ONLY policy which seeks to crush the economy of any nation Joe Biden is unable to compete fairly with?
To aid in considering the responsible, adult answer to that question, we have the following financial or economic fallout as a direct result of Joe’s intentional policy to harm China through economic warfare, to wit:
Marketwatch
“Chip stocks crushed to two-year low as more tech, AI ban to China add to woes”
By Wallace Witkowski
October 7, 2022
The chip sector melted down Friday for its third 6% one-day drop of the year after U.S. regulators moved to pump the brakes on China’s military ambitions as it issued wider restrictions on semiconductor and AI technology that can be sold to the world’s second-largest economy.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Commerce expanded its list of chip technology that requires a license to be sold to China — essentially a euphemism for a ban if the license can be denied — and the PHLX Semiconductor Index, which had been down around 3% before the news broke, dropped to close the session down 6.1% at 2,356.75, a closing level that investors last saw on the uptick in early November 2020.
News of the ban was served fresh on the back of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. issuing a $1 billion shortfall warning on expected sales to PC customers late Thursday.
That followed last week’s revenue forecast from memory-chip maker Micron Technology Inc., which was about $1 billion below Street expectations, prompting analysts to ask whether 2022’s sudden chip glut is worse than the one in 2019.
AMD shares led the fall for chip stocks with a 13.9% drop to close at $58.44, with Micron shares down a modest 2.9% at $52.91.
The Commerce Department’s wider list adds to one from September that focused on AI tech from Nvidia Corp.
Shares of Nvidia fell 8% to close at $120.76 Friday.
Nvidia shares melted down last month when the graphics processing unit maker disclosed the list of products that needed a license to sell to China, primarily the company’s A100 and H100 data-center AI technology, and estimated a potential $400 million hit in expected third-quarter revenue if licenses were denied.
The ban just added to Nvidia’s bleed-out year as it has cut its outlook not just once, not just twice, but three times.
Elsewhere in the sector, shares of Intel Corp. fell 5.4% Friday, while shares of Qualcomm Inc. declined 3.5% and Broadcom Inc. shares fell 4%.
Shares of Texas Instruments Inc., which happens to be the largest U.S. supplier of auto chips, fell 4.4%.
As for the third-party fabs that produce the silicon wafers that become microchips, shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. shares declined 6.2%, and GlobalFoundries Inc. shares fell 5.2%.
Shares of Marvell Technology Inc., which in August disappointed with its data-center forecast, also took an 11.7% beating to close at $42.35.
Over the course of 2022, the SOX index has fallen 40% on the year, with shares of both AMD and Nvidia in a freefall of nearly 60%, while the S&P 500 index has shed 24%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index has dropped 32%.
end quotes
Do we have a MADMAN at the helm of the Ship of State?
Is it way past time for the 25th Amendment to be invoked to save the United States of America from the madness, lunacy and insanity of Joe Biden who is making war on China on his own without our INFORMED CONSENT in direct contradiction of what Joe said would be the case in his Remarks by President Biden Before the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 21, 2021, at United Nations Headquarters, New York, New York, where we had Joe blowing hard with regard to his JINGOISM, to wit:
THE PRESIDENT: Make no mistake: The United States will continue to defend ourselves, our Allies, and our interests against attack, including terrorist threats, as we prepare to use force if any is necessary, but — to defend our vital U.S. national interests, including against ongoing and imminent threats.
But the mission must be clear and achievable, undertaken with the informed consent of the American people and, whenever possible, in partnership with our Allies.
end quotes
IS JOE BIDEN’S MISSION TO CRUSH AND DESTROY THE ECONOMY OF CHINA CLEAR AND ACHIEVABLE?
HAS JOE SOUGHT OUR INFORMED CONSENT WITH REGARD TO HIS ULTRANATIONALISTIC POLICY TO CRUCH AND DESTROY THE ECONOMY OF CHINA?
OR HAS JOE SIMPLY DICTATORILY AND AUTOCRATICALLY IMPOSED IT ON US?
Think it over, people, while there is still time.
And if you don’t like the direction Joe Biden is taking this country in with his ULTRANATIONALSM, then be sure to exercise you right to vote in November to put the hobbles on Joe and a Martingale bit in his mouth!
And as we stay abreast of developments stemming from Joe Biden’s declaration of economic warfare against his hated and feared enemy China, we have from Reuters on that subject as follows:
“China holds emergency talks with chip firms after U.S. curbs -Bloomberg News”
Reuters
October 20, 2022
Oct 20 (Reuters) – China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology convened a series of emergency meetings over the past week with leading semiconductor companies, seeking to assess the damage from the U.S. chip restrictions, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
The ministry summoned executives from firms including Yangtze Memory Technologies Co and supercomputer specialist Dawning Information Industry Co to attend closed-door meetings, the report said.
This month the Biden administration passed a sweeping set of export controls aimed at slowing Beijing’s technological and military advances, including sales restrictions on certain advanced chips and chip equipment tools.
Experts have said the new rules will have a broad impact, slowing China’s efforts to develop its own chip industry and advance commercial and state research involving military weapons, artificial intelligence, data centres and many other areas that are powered by supercomputers and high-end chips.
According to the Bloomberg report, many of the participants at the meetings argued that the U.S. curbs spell doom for their industry, as well as China’s ambitions to untether its economy from American technology.
On Sunday, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for his country to “win the battle” in core technologies in his full work report as he kicked off the once-every-five-years Communist Party Congress.
Experts have said the work report could signal an overhaul in Beijing’s approach to advancing its tech industry, with more state-led spending and intervention to counter U.S. pressures.
end quotes
So it looks like “game on” for Joe.
And us, as well.
Stay tuned.
Joe Biden’s war of choice on China has just begun, and if Joe’s war of choice on Putin and Russia is any measure, we are going to suffer for it!
And while Joe Biden makes enemies out of Saudi Arabia and China with his “MEGA MAGA ULTRANATIONALISTIC AMERICA ONLY” policies, making the United States into a “PARIAH” nation on the world stage as we are being increasingly isolated by Joe Biden, we have the following from Reuters to consider as the madness and insanity that characterize the foreign policies of the Biden regime continues, where we find that Joe’s many enemies do not really need the United States for anything, and so, can isolate us as a “PARIAH” (A pariah state, also called an international pariah or a global pariah, is a nation considered to be an outcast in the international community) thanks to Joe Biden, to wit:
“Saudi, China agree to strengthen energy cooperation – SPA”
Reuters
October 21, 2022
DUBAI, Oct 21 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman and the director of China’s National Energy Administration Zhang Jianhua on Friday said they would strengthen their ties in the energy sector, the Saudi state news agency SPA reported.
The officials spoke in a teleconference call and stressed the importance of stable long-term supplies to crude oil markets, SPA said.
The Saudi minister reaffirmed earlier on Friday from New Delhi that OPEC+ is doing the right job to ensure stable and sustainable oil markets.
The United States and Saudi Arabia have been at odds since a decision by OPEC+ group of oil producers, of which Saudi is the de facto leader, to cut output even after the Biden administration sought to stay OPEC’s hand for a month with an eye on U.S. mid-term elections.
China, the world’s largest crude importer, has stuck to strict COVID curbs this year, which weighed heavily on business and economic activity, lowering demand for fuel.
But reports that Beijing is considering cutting the quarantine period for visitors to seven days have bolstered prices on Thursday despite no official confirmation of the measure.
Prince Abdulaziz and his Chinese counterpart agreed to continue cooperation efforts to maintain stability in oil markets, SPA said, adding that the Kingdom continues to be China’s most reliable partner and supplier of crude oil.
He had earlier this week spoken with the trade minister of Japan, another key client, and discussed strengthening cooperation on energy.
And here we have yet more madness and insanity from good old short-sighted, shallow-thinking, knee-jerking Joe Biden, who is unable to put two and two together to get a four, with all of his green dreams and schemes that are nothing more that tax-payer funded pie in the sky (a fanciful notion; an unrealistic or ludicrous concept; the illusory promise of a desired outcome that is unlikely to happen), to wit:
Reuters
“Analysis: Biden’s EV minerals cash fruitless without permitting reform”
By Ernest Scheyder
October 24, 2022
Oct 24 (Reuters) – Washington’s growing financial support for companies that produce metals used in electric vehicles will likely prove fruitless unless the federal government streamlines the mine permitting process, investors, executives and consultants told Reuters.
President Joe Biden last week doled out $2.8 billion to miners developing new U.S. sources of lithium, nickel, copper and other EV minerals, as well as battery parts manufacturers and recyclers.
Those grants followed August’s Inflation Reduction Act, which links EV tax credits to minerals extracted domestically or from 20 allies.
Both measures aim to spur domestic mining and push the country closer to Biden’s goal for half of all new U.S. vehicles to be electric by 2030.
But it currently takes a decade or longer to obtain a U.S. mining permit, an arduous process that frustrates miners who welcome the financial support but want more permitting transparency.
Biden’s administration has also opposed permits for several proposed mines.
“The U.S. government is saying ‘Go! Go! Go!,’ but the environmental review process is extremely cumbersome,” said Jerry Hicks at the Optica Rare Earths & Critical Materials ETF, which holds shares of Albemarle Corp, Freeport-McMoRan Inc and Glencore Plc.
“China has the infrastructure in place, and it’s going to take a long time for the U.S. to get anywhere close.”
“What I would like, if I could ask for something, is predictability,” said Arne Frandsen, chief executive of mining investment group Pallinghurst and a director at Talon Metals Corp, which received $114.8 million from Biden to partially fund a nickel processing plant in North Dakota that will supply Tesla Inc.
“It’s difficult to get capital to commit if you don’t know if you’ll get a permit in 12 months or five years.”
Yet most proposed U.S. mining projects would be new mines that face widespread pushback, several from Biden himself.
Lithium Americas Corp’s efforts to build the largest U.S. lithium mine are mired in a court battle.
Piedmont Lithium Inc, which received $141.7 million from Biden, faces opposition to its North Carolina mining project.
“What really needs to happen is not for permitting to be relaxed, but to be expedited to ensure we can build the mines that can supply the automakers,” said Jordan Roberts, a minerals analyst at consultancy Fastmarkets.
Permitting delays may paradoxically keep EV prices high by limiting the domestic supply of minerals needed to reduce battery prices, said Hicks of the Optica Rare Earths & Critical Materials ETF.
The yawning divide between America and China’s approaches to funding the EV supply chain is now a top concern for many policymakers and their advisers in the nation’s capital.
“Unless you can break ground on these sites, you’re not going to be able to take advantage of those funds,” said Abigail Wulf at SAFE, an energy-focused think tank.
Megalomania, which Joe Biden suffers from a severe case of, is defined as an “obsession with the exercise of power, especially in the domination of others,” “delusions of grandeur,” and “delusions about one’s own power or importance (typically as a symptom of manic or paranoid disorder).”
With respect to this thread, Joe actually thinks he has China running scared of him and his plans to win the race for the 21st century, which is a delusion Joe suffers from, given that outside the fevered mind of Joe Biden, there is no race for the 21st century, that being nothing more than another stupid political slogan from Joe, which takes us to a Bloomberg article titled “Biden Crows About Chips Bill, Says Xi ‘Concerned’ About US Plans” by Justin Sink and Jennifer Jacobs on 27 October 2022, where we have more of Joe’s delusions of his own grandeur, to wit:
(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden said China’s leader had expressed worries about the US strengthening its domestic production of semiconductor chips as his administration moves to reduce reliance on Asian suppliers and restrict Chinese access to chipmaking technology.
“I’ve heard from Xi Jinping that he’s a little concerned about that,” Biden said Thursday in Syracuse, New York, as he delivered a speech touting job growth and his economic agenda ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
end quotes
What I have heard from Xi Jinping is that he is concerned about Joe Biden upsetting the international order and norms by declaring economic war against China, and that he intends, as we saw from a Reuters article above here titled “China holds emergency talks with chip firms after U.S. curbs -Bloomberg News” on October 20, 2022, to wean China off of dependence on the USA, effectively isolating us, calling for his country to “win the battle” in core technologies to protect China’s national security from Joe Biden, a clear and present danger to global peace and harmony, in his full work report as he kicked off the once-every-five-years Communist Party Congress.
Going back to the Bloomberg article on Joe’s megalomania, it continues as follows:
Biden hailed the bipartisan Chips and Science Act, which he signed into law in August, and said it would help the US “out-compete the rest of the world” in chipmaking.
“Because of the new law I signed and Chuck designed and delivered, we’re turning things way around,” said Biden, who was joined by New York lawmakers and officials, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The moves strike at the very foundation of China’s efforts to build its own cutting-edge chips.
China’s embassy hit back against the recent US economic measures aimed at curbing Beijing’s access to advanced technology.
Speaking in an online briefing on Thursday, before Biden’s remarks, senior Chinese diplomat Wang Hongxia criticized the new chip rules as an “abuse of export control measures,” and accused the Biden administration of a “politicized and weaponized” approach to normal economic and business cooperation.
“These negative measures have brought huge losses to businesses and consumers in both countries,” said Wang, who is a counselor in the embassy’s office of economic and commercial affairs.
“Once the Chinese market is lost, it will be hard to regain.”
end quotes
And that message about “Once the Chinese market is lost, it will be hard to regain” is totally lost on knee-jerking, shallow-thinking, short-sighted Joe Biden, who believes that only he can “save” us from the rest of the world, which is how megalomaniacs think.
So game is on for Joe, and by extension, us, and the rest of the world, as well, as this one rug-chewing madman indeed does abuse export control measures,” while having a “politicized and weaponized” approach to normal economic and business cooperation.
So where does this economic war of Joe Biden’s against China go from here?
All I can say is stay tuned for more!
And getting back to the chaos the short-sighted, shallow-thinking, knee-jerking autocrat Joe Biden is unleashing upon America, which is to say, us, the American people, the majority of whom believe Joe Biden is taking this country in a wrong direction with all of his green dreams and schemes that are nothing more that tax-payer funded pie in the sky (a fanciful notion; an unrealistic or ludicrous concept; the illusory promise of a desired outcome that is unlikely to happen) and a an essential part of his “SUPER MEGA Ultra-MAGA Great Leap Forward” as embodied in Joe’s First Five Year Plan now known to history as “Joe Biden’s America First Plan to Build America Back Better to Make America Great Again,” let’s go to a Reuters article titled “US West faces power reliability issues from growing use of renewables” on November 11, 2022, to see the madness and insanity that is baked into Joe’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which is going to do anything but, as it makes us weaker as a nation and as a people and drives us to third-world country status where you may or may not have electricity on any given day, like, say, Baghdad, Iraq, as follows:
Nov 11 (Reuters) – A group responsible for power market reliability in Western North America said the growing use of renewable generation will require the region to boost planning reserves in coming years to help maintain grid reliability.
end quotes
“Planning Reserves” means being able to rely for back-up on something that is not solar or wind.
Getting back to that story, and keeping in mind that at the same time we are talking about this subject of electrical power in the future Joe Biden’s green dreams are leading us to, Joe is also putting huge government resources into building chip fabs, which are notoriously energy-intensive, in that same western area.
Getting back to Reuters, that story continues as follows:
The Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) said in a recent reliability assessment that planning reserve margins for 2023 rose from 16.9% in 2021 to 18.3% in 2022 due in part to the increase in variable resources, like wind and solar, that only produce power when the wind blows or the sun shines.
That means electric companies will have to hold more resources to account for that increased variability to maintain system reliability.
“If nothing is done to mitigate the long-term risks within the Western Interconnection, by 2025 we anticipate severe risks to the reliability and security of the interconnection,” WECC said in the assessment.
The problem will get worse over time since most western states have committed to aggressive clean energy targets and the federal government plans to spend billions on clean energy development under the Inflation Reduction Act.
Over the next decade, WECC said entities in the West plan to retire nearly 26 gigawatts (GW) of mostly coal and natural gas-fired resources, and build close to 80 GW of mostly solar, wind, and battery storage.
end quotes
All I can do is to sit here and shake my head at the sheer stupidity and insanity at play here.
Let’s insure our future, says Joe Biden, by building at great governmental expense an unreliable and untrustworthy energy grid that may or may not deliver power tomarrow depending on the weather because it is the GREEN THING to do!
If anyone is really interested in the car-wreck of a future Joe Biden’s GREEN DREAMS on steroids are heading us towards, let’s go to an article in The Hill titled “The West needs leadership: Biden has failed the test” by Liz Peek, on
28 September 2022, where we have as follows on that subject, to wit:
Meanwhile, the other inflation-fighting measure that Biden should undertake is to increase energy production, full-stop.
Not only is the rise in global oil and natural gas prices pushing up inflation, Europe faces shortages that could become a humanitarian disaster.
Consider: England has opened warming centers to prevent people from freezing to death this winter.
Libraries and museums are among the organizations that have been conscripted into offering shelter to people who cannot afford their energy bills.
The only glitch: Some of the public buildings are struggling to pay their own heating bills.
The Guardian reports: “Catalyst Science Discovery Centre and Museum in Widnes, Cheshire, said last week that the quote for renewing its annual gas contract had risen from £9,700 to £54,362.”
Such hikes are not unusual in Britain.
Like Biden, policymakers there blame Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine for enormous energy cost increases, but that is not the entire story.
Well before Russia invaded its western neighbor, electricity prices in the UK skyrocketed.
Why?
Because the country had become dependent on wind towers in the North Sea for one-fourth of its electricity.
Towers which stopped turning for six weeks in August 2021, when the wind died down, as it sometimes does.
Faced with the sudden shortfall of wind energy, the UK scrambled to replace the missing fuel with natural gas, driving a six-fold increase in price.
England’s electricity prices doubled overnight.
As in Germany and elsewhere, the push to change over to renewable energy in the UK came with no back-up plan.
The wind sometimes stops blowing, the sun occasionally goes under.
Politicians pandering to the climate alarmists pay no attention to such pesky details.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) is following the same path — demanding all-out electrification of his state even as the grid gets dangerously overburdened.
Higher prices and less reliable deliveries are the unfortunate results.
Biden wants to take the Newsom program national, and made a hefty down payment with the Inflation Reduction Act.
But a leader would tell the country that, while that is still the long-term ambition, we face a global emergency that requires maximum use of all energy sources.
A leader would sit down with the country’s leading oil and gas producers (which Biden has refused to do) and map out a plan to ramp up output here at home.
Increased production of oil and natural gas would lower home heating costs this winter in the U.S. and help our allies deal with shortages worsened by the war in Ukraine.
Bucking up European economies, our major trading partners, would also help the U.S. economy.
The world is facing an economic crisis.
The United States should do everything possible to help squash inflation, here and overseas.
Unfortunately, that would require gutsy measures from a president who is underwater in the polls and who, incredibly, appears to think things are going just fine.
Sounds like Fisker all over again!
Will Joe be bailing out these EV companies as well?
And I wonder if and when Joe Biden will ever figure out that the more people trying to obtain the same resources always drives the cost of those resources up, not down:
Reuters
“Electric vehicle makers burning cash, slammed by sky-high costs”
By Akash Sriram
November 14, 2022
Nov 14 (Reuters) – Every time Lucid Group Inc or Rivian Automotive Inc sells an electric car, they are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars due to staggering raw material and production costs, their latest earnings statements showed.
Quarterly reports from electric vehicle (EV) makers from the past two weeks show them struggling to hit delivery targets and rapidly burning through cash.
Lucid’s cost of revenue surged to $492.5 million in the July-September quarter from $3.3 million a year earlier, and its losses widened as customers canceled orders fearing long wait times.
The company, which went public a little over a year ago and is backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, saw its market value shrivel by two-thirds this year to about $20 billion from $95 billion at its peak in November 2021.
The company said it had enough cash to sustain itself at least into the fourth quarter of next year and is looking to raise about $1.5 billion through a stock sale.
Its stock price slumped 17% after results, and clawed back some losses in the next two sessions to finish on Friday down 4.4% from before it reported.
U.S.-listed British firm Arrival SA warned last week it may not have enough cash to keep its business going toward the end of next year, and would have to cut jobs.
It has yet to start mass production.
Canoo Inc said in May it had “substantial doubt” about remaining a going concern.
At the end of September, it had $6.8 million in cash and equivalents, down sharply from $415 million a year earlier.
Many EV startups recorded huge losses in the September quarter and warned that high costs were here to stay due to surging inflation and a global supply chain crisis.
White & Case
“President Biden Signs CHIPS and Science Act into Law”
12 August 2022
On August 9, 2022, President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act (H.R.4346), which seeks to bolster the US semiconductor supply chain and promote research and development of advanced technologies in the United States.
Key provisions and updates in the CHIPS and Science Act are as follows:
* “FABS Act” investment tax credit. The bill establishes a new 25 percent tax credit for investments in semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the United States (not envisioned in the USICA or the COMPETES Act).
*********************
“GlobalFoundries plans job cuts, hiring freeze, shifting priorities from thoughts of second Malta fab”
Larry Rulison, Albany, New York Times Union
Nov. 14, 2022
MALTA — Despite reporting record earnings last week, Saratoga County chipmaker GlobalFoundries is planning company-wide job cuts and a hiring freeze, contributing to uncertainty over if and when it will build a second factory in Malta.
GlobalFoundries spokeswoman Erica McGill confirmed the plans Monday and said the reasons for the layoffs go beyond the company’s positive third-quarter results.
“On the heels of a strong third quarter with solid fourth-quarter guidance, we face rapidly developing uncertainties of the global economy, including inflation, continued elevated energy costs and rapid interest rate increases that are impacting our industry and GF,” McGill said.
“Based on the current macroeconomic environment, we are taking a very disciplined, proactive approach to contain costs and accelerate our planned productivity initiatives,” McGill said.
“Like many in our industry and across the technology sector, we too are initiating a hiring freeze and taking a set of focused actions to selectively reduce our workforce.”
GlobalFoundries CEO Thomas Caulfield said at the start of the call that some customers have recently asked to “modestly adjust some of their 2023 shipments downward,” likely in the first half of the year.
“We are proactively taking actions to contain costs and to accelerate our previously planned productivity initiatives,” Caulfield said.
“Though it is difficult to take these actions during a year of record output, we believe that taking these actions now enables us to continue to outperform the market regardless of the economic environment.”
During the conference call, GlobalFoundries Chief Financial Officer David Reeder mentioned the “smart mobile” device market as one sector seeking fewer chips due in part to an “inventory correction,” meaning the sector is seeing less demand for its products.
Apple has seen lower-than-expected demand for its new iPhone 14, for example.
The chip industry is notoriously volatile and chipmakers will cut jobs and other expenses if they forecast difficult economic conditions due to the enormous costs of chip manufacturing.
Although GlobalFoundries can tap into $52 billion in federal government subsidies made available to chipmakers to expand in the U.S. through the recently approved CHIPS Act to build the new facility, Caulfield said no firm decisions have been made on whether — or when — construction would begin.
“From a GF perspective, we will not put capacity on without customers committed to that demand,” Caulfield said during the conference call.
“The rate and pace at which we do it will be dictated by how quickly our customers are looking for us to create this capacity for them as they think about rebalancing their supply chains and bringing some of that product to the states,” Caulfield said.
“I call it the $52 billion question.”
OCTOBER 13, 2021
FACT SHEET: Biden Administration Efforts to Address Bottlenecks at Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Moving Goods from Ship to Shelf
President Biden knew that there would be massive economic challenges emerging from the pandemic.
The Biden Administration acted quickly to get the economy moving again – passing and implementing the American Rescue Plan to get checks in bank accounts and get Americans vaccinated.
But as the country recovers from a once in a century pandemic and economic crisis, the private businesses that make up our supply chains, which get goods to businesses and the American people, have struggled to keep up.
The President launched the Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force in June, which included a focus on transportation and logistics bottlenecks to the U.S. economic recovery.
After meeting with local government leaders and companies to diagnose the problems and identify solutions, Port Envoy John Porcari was appointed in August to help drive coordination between the many private firms who control the transportation and logistics supply chain.
Today, the Administration is convening business leaders, port leaders, and union leaders to discuss the challenges at ports across the country and actions each partner can take to address the delays and congestion across the transportation supply chain.
And the President will meet with the leadership from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) to discuss the actions they are each taking to address these challenges in Southern California.
These leaders are announcing a series of public and private commitments to move more goods faster, and strengthen the resiliency of our supply chains, by moving towards 24/7 operations at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
These two ports are the point of entry for 40 percent of containers to the U.S., and are on track to reach new highs in container traffic this year.
********************************
Reuters
“Port of Los Angeles October imports tumble, pressured by labor worries”
By Lisa Baertlein
November 15, 2022
LOS ANGELES, Nov 15 (Reuters) – October volume at the busiest U.S. seaport fell to its lowest level since 2009 as shippers sent cargo to alternate trade gateways to avoid potential disruptions from ongoing West Coast port labor talks, Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said on Tuesday.
The data comes as ocean trade activity returns to more normalized levels after booming in the early days of the COVID-19 crisis.
Seaports like New York/New Jersey, Savannah and Houston have benefited from the uncertainty surrounding ongoing West Coast port labor talks and continue to report robust results.
Port of Los Angles data showed that the facility handled 678,429 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) last month – almost 25% fewer than in October last year.
The biggest drag was from incoming “cargo that has shifted to the East and Gulf Coasts due to protracted labor negotiations” between West Coast port workers and their employers, Seroka said.
Beyond that, U.S. demand for physical goods is retreating from the early pandemic’s record highs.
Consumers who splurged on goods like golf clubs, grills and sofas before infection control measures lifted are now prioritizing travel and other entertainment as inflation squeezes their disposable income.
Imports, which accounted for almost 50% of October’s volume, tumbled 28% from the year earlier.
Empty containers, comprising 37% of the work handled at the port, dropped more than 25%.
Year-to-date volume is down almost 6% versus 2021, when Los Angeles port volume hit an all-time annual high.
Seroka expects the downtrend to continue at the Southern California port.
“The November numbers will be soft.”
“So will December,” he said.
Watertown Daily Times, N.Y.
“In Syracuse, Biden touts Democratic economic successes as he welcomes Micron chipmaking facility”
Alex Gault, Watertown Daily Times, N.Y.
October 28, 2022
Oct. 28—SYRACUSE — In a visit to the city on Thursday, President Joseph R. Biden championed a resurgence in American manufacturing as he and other federal, state and local officials welcomed semiconductor and computer microchip manufacturer Micron to Central New York.
Alongside Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y, and Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, D-N.Y., the president declared that upstate New York’s manufacturing legacy is back.
“One of the most significant investments in American history is going to ensure that the future is made in America,” President Biden said to a gymnasium of people on the Onondaga Community College campus Thursday afternoon.
Returning to the city where he attended law school, President Biden struck a triumphant tone as he talked to the assembled crowd, and said the Micron investment is just the start of a new future for New York and American manufacturing.
***********************************
Reuters
“Micron to supply fewer memory chips in 2023, plans fresh capex cuts”
Reuters
November 16, 2022
Nov 16 (Reuters) – Micron Technology Inc said on Wednesday it would reduce memory chip supply and make more cuts to its capital spending plan, as the semiconductor firm struggles to clear excess inventory due to a slump in demand.
Micron was the first major chipmaker to sound an alarm about falling demand for personal computers and smartphones earlier this year in the face of decades-high inflation.
Chipmakers and electronics companies, which had been preparing for the pandemic-led demand surge to sustain and had for long struggled with supply constraints, soon found themselves with overstocked inventory.
The broader weakness seeped throughout the industry, and is now affecting all end-markets from personal electronics to data centers to industrial.
“In order to significantly improve total inventory … DRAM bit supply will need to shrink and NAND bit supply growth will need to be significantly lower than previous estimates,” the company said.
Micron said it is reducing DRAM and NAND wafer starts – or the initial process in semiconductor production – by about 20% compared with the fourth quarter that ended on Sept. 1.
For 2023, the company expects its year-on-year bit supply growth to be negative for DRAM and in the single-digit percentage range for NAND.
The Hill
“Gretchen Whitmer’s auto job race to the bottom”
Opinion by James David Dickson, Opinion Contributor
19 November 2022
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wants to be known for creating jobs in Michigan’s all-important auto industry.
In October, she proudly declared that “since taking office, we’ve announced 30,000+ auto jobs and counting.”
But “announced” is different from “created,” and she’s walking back earlier claims that she has overseen actual job growth.
Worse, she is ignoring that her actions to spend taxpayer money on electric vehicle (EV) production are helping to kill the very auto jobs she claims to care so much about.
In her four years in office, Whitmer has presided over a spate of layoffs from the Big Three automakers: General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.
In August, two months after getting a $100 million state subsidy to hire 3,030 blue-collar workers to build EVs, Ford let go about 3,000 white-collar workers, saying a “significant percentage” would be in Michigan.
The state of Michigan paid Ford $100 million in taxpayer dollars to trade white-collar jobs for blue-collar jobs.
GM dismissed about 800 workers in Detroit three years ago, while Stellantis, which makes Chrysler vehicles, started downsizing over the summer at various Michigan plants.
The layoffs are connected to each company’s efforts to ramp up production of electric vehicles.
EVs do not require as many workers to build, which fundamentally means a slimmed-down American auto industry.
And that means fewer jobs.
If this were a market-driven dynamic, there would be little to complain about.
But it’s not — it is the government using taxpayer dollars to subsidize vehicles that require fewer jobs to manufacture.
The Whitmer administration is following the Biden administration’s lead in the push to make the Michigan auto industry produce more electric vehicles.
Just last year, President Biden issued an executive order targeting that 50 percent of vehicles sold by 2030 be electric or carbon-free.
When it was announced, the Big Three supported this overly ambitious goal, but made a point to say that it could “be achieved only with the timely deployment of the full suite of electrification policies committed to by the administration in the Build Back Better Plan,” including “incentives to expand the electric vehicle manufacturing and supply chains.”
These incentives have grown beyond the federal government and now come straight from the hands of state taxpayers.
In that Ford deal in June, Michigan threw in another $50 million in tax exemptions for Ford’s EV facility in River Rouge.
Since taking office in 2019, Whitmer has thrown well over a billion dollars in taxpayer money at electric vehicle production.
Why are taxpayers being forced to pay for the privilege of lost jobs and potentially unwanted electric vehicles, which have an average sticker price of $66,000?
These giveaways are being sold as all upside in the future, but the downside is being felt in the here-and-now.
Layoffs today are more real than the hope of good-paying jobs tomorrow.
Michigan already has half the amount of the auto jobs it had in 2000, the state’s recovery from the Great Recession has lagged the rest of the country, and throwing billions of taxpayer dollars toward EV production will do little to bring those jobs back.
Job announcements have a way of not materializing.
Taxpayer giveaways are bad business.
Nationwide, the jobs touted in subsidy announcements have a track record of never showing up, reflecting in part the uneconomical nature of taxpayer giveaways.
If the promised electric vehicle jobs don’t arrive in Michigan, it will reflect reality: These businesses don’t work, even with the subsidies.
Oops.
Whitmer surely knows this, given the history of failed green-energy subsidies under one of her predecessors, Jennifer Granholm, now the U.S. Secretary of Energy.
But like many other supporters of taxpayer giveaways, she also knows that when it’s finally clear that taxpayer money was wasted, it won’t affect her.
By the time taxpayers learn how those deals went, there will be no way to hold accountable those who championed them.
The conventional wisdom, from reporters and pollsters and political consultants, will claim that “everybody has moved on.”
That’s why Michiganders and taxpayers across the country should pay attention now.
Catch the next one before it happens.
“Showered with subsidies, GlobalFoundries, Micron eye cuts”
Larry Rulison, Albany, New York Times Union
Updated: Nov. 18, 2022
ust months after President Joe Biden signed the $52 billion CHIPS Act that will provide billions of dollars to chipmakers to build new factories in the United States and expand existing facilities — and just weeks after U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and Gov. Kathy Hochul celebrated a landmark deal to convince Micron Technology to build a massive new factory outside of Syracuse, the industry is starting to signal that it needs to put the brakes on spending.
GlobalFoundries and others have said they plan job cuts and hiring freezes.
And Micron says it will cut memory chip production by 20 percent, along with pulling back on capital spending.
The situation is raising eyebrows because of the number of incentives New York state and the federal government are offering these companies to build upstate.
When you operate factories that cost up to $10 billion each, the easiest way to go bankrupt is to operate them at full capacity when demand is falling.
Right now, the chip industry is facing a tough outlook for the first half of 2023 as customer demand for chips, especially for smartphones, is softening due to persistent price inflation, high energy prices, a recent pummeling of technology company stocks and a crisis in the crypto market.
Robert Maire, a chip industry analyst who runs a firm called Semiconductor Advisors in New York City, said Micron had already signaled significant cuts to capital expenditures earlier this year, and this latest announcement could mean it “will all but go to zero” for the time being.
The oversupply of memory chips, Maire said in a research note published Wednesday, is due in large part to technological advances that make memory chips more powerful than previous generations.
There is no need for end-users to buy new chips right now.
“This fact is also the same with every other memory maker from Samsung (the largest memory chipmaker in the world) on down, so we will be floating in excess memory chips for a long time until demand picks up to absorb the excess supply brought about by technology advancements,” Maire added.
“Micron’s new fab in Boise will clearly be delayed as need for additional capacity is nonexistent over the next several years,” Maire continued.
“The fab after Boise, in New York, will clearly be pushed back even further.”
GlobalFoundries CEO Thomas Caulfield told analysts last week that the company’s plans to build a second fab at its headquarters in Saratoga County, where it has an existing factory, are dependent on customer demand and long-term orders that have yet to be found.
Funk China-Joe, Kamal-Toe, and each and every one of you that voted for him.
This is a story about how one out-of-control and out-of-touch-with-reality “world leader” obsessed with wielding raw power like a cudgel or bludgeon can take actions harmful to the world at large that cannot be challenged by anyone being harmed because the obsessed “world leader,” a fool, really, is too powerful, to wit:
Politico
“Europe accuses US of profiting from war – EU officials attack Joe Biden over sky-high gas prices, weapons sales and trade as Vladimir Putin’s war threatens to destroy Western unity.”
By Barbara Moens, Jakob Hanke Vela and Jacopo Barigazzi
November 24, 2022
Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and now accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer.
“The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,” one senior official told POLITICO.
The explosive comments — backed in public and private by officials, diplomats and ministers elsewhere — follow mounting anger in Europe over American subsidies that threaten to wreck European industry.
The biggest point of tension in recent weeks has been Biden’s green subsidies and taxes that Brussels says unfairly tilt trade away from the EU and threaten to destroy European industries.
The growing dispute over Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — a huge tax, climate and health care package — has put fears over a transatlantic trade war high on the political agenda again.
“The Inflation Reduction Act is very worrying,” said Dutch Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher.
“The potential impact on the European economy is very big.”
“The U.S. is following a domestic agenda, which is regrettably protectionist and discriminates against U.S. allies,” said Tonino Picula, the European Parliament’s lead person on the transatlantic relationship.
Cheaper energy has quickly become a huge competitive advantage for American companies, too.
Businesses are planning new investments in the U.S. or even relocating their existing businesses away from Europe to American factories.
Just this week, chemical multinational Solvay announced it is choosing the U.S. over Europe for new investments, in the latest of a series of similar announcements from key EU industrial giants.
Despite the energy disagreements, it wasn’t until Washington announced a $369 billion industrial subsidy scheme to support green industries under the Inflation Reduction Act that Brussels went into full-blown panic mode.
“The Inflation Reduction Act has changed everything,” one EU diplomat said.
“Is Washington still our ally or not?”
An official from France’s foreign affairs ministry said the diagnosis is clear: These are “discriminatory subsidies that will distort competition.”
French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire this week even accused the U.S. of going down China’s path of economic isolationism, urging Brussels to replicate such an approach.
“Europe must not be the last of the Mohicans,” he said.
The EU is preparing its responses, such as a big subsidy push to prevent European industry from being wiped out by American rivals.
“We are experiencing a creeping crisis of trust on trade issues in this relationship,” said German MEP Reinhard Bütikofer.
“At some point, you have to assert yourself,” said French MEP Marie-Pierre Vedrenne.
“We are in a world of power struggles.”
This is a tough time to be in business in the USA because you never know when Joe Biden is going to strip you of your markets on a whim of his, or strip you of your suppliers:
Reuters
“U.S. to expand solar panel tariffs after probe finds Chinese evasion”
By Nichola Groom
December 2, 2022
Dec 2 (Reuters) – The United States will impose new duties on imports from some major Chinese solar panel makers after a months-long investigation found they were trying to dodge tariffs by finishing their products in Southeast Asian countries, trade officials said on Friday.
The preliminary decision was bad news for U.S. solar project developers that rely on cheap imports to fuel their growth, but fell short of the industry’s worst fears that Washington would impose new tariffs to cover all solar shipments from the region, instead of just those from specific companies.
Buyers of solar panels for both large utility projects and residential rooftops say new tariffs would worsen what is already a difficult market for accessing solar energy equipment.
“The only good news here is that Commerce didn’t target all imports from the subject countries,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president of solar trade group the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), said in an emailed statement.
“This is a mistake we will have to deal with for the next several years,” she added.
The mere threat of new tariffs on solar imports also contributed to a slowdown in project development this year, the industry has said.
Never in my life have I seen one man upend the global economy and cause such chaos in the world as is the case with the shallow-thinking, short-sighted and ham-handed Joe Biden, a one-man wrecking crew who is extending his economic warfare against Russia and China to include his allies in Europe:
Reuters
“German economy ministry calls for joint EU response to U.S. inflation act”
December 9, 2022
BERLIN, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Germany wants a joint European response to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act that would involve simplifying rules on state support and expanding funding opportunities, according to a German economy ministry document seen by Reuters on Friday.
The ministry document also suggests member states could anchor sustainability criteria more firmly in public tenders at the national level as well as extend or increase traditional subsidy programmes, but warned against local content requirements which favour domestic industry.
These would not only likely contradict World Trade Organization (WTO) law, according to the document, but also contribute to “a further erosion of the world trade order”.
While European Union countries welcome Washington’s investment drive for green technology, they claim 200 billion euros ($207 billion) of U.S. subsidies tied to locally produced content could break WTO rules by disadvantaging their companies.
This sounds like Fisker and Solyndra all over again:
Fox News
“Biden admin defends handing lucrative grant to energy firm with deep China ties”
Story by Thomas Catenacci
11 DECEMBER 2022
The Biden administration defended giving a $200 million grant to a battery component manufacturing company with ties to the Chinese government.
Microvast was one of just 20 American companies to receive a portion of the nearly $3 billion appropriated for a program designed to boost domestic battery manufacturing capabilities.
However, 69% of Microvast’s revenue was generated in China and just 3% came from the U.S., according to a third quarter financial disclosure it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month.
In the same filing, the company acknowledged that the Chinese government “exerts substantial influence” over its business activities and “may intervene at any time and with no notice.”
The company went public on the stock exchange via a special-purpose acquisition company in July 2021, allowing it to avoid normal regulatory scrutiny of the traditional initial public offering process.
The SEC placed Microvast on a watchlist in April over financial auditing issues related to its foreign ties, an action that could result in the company being delisted.
The Biden administration chose to award the grant to Microvast despite the SEC’s action and despite the company’s poor financial performance in recent years.
In 2021, the company incurred a net loss of $206.5 million and accumulated a deficit of $632.1 million.
Its stock price has fallen more than 80% since it first went public.
As does this:
THE PANTAGRAPH
“Watch now: Biden touts Rivian in electric vehicle speech”
Feb 9, 2022
NORMAL — President Joe Biden on Tuesday included Rivian Automotive in his remarks about electric vehicle manufacturing and infrastructure.
“Since 2021, companies have announced investments totaling more than $200 billion in domestic manufacturing here in America, from iconic companies like GM and Ford building out new electric vehicle production; to Tesla, our nation’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer; to innovative younger companies like Rivian, building electric trucks, or Proterra, building electric buses, which I saw at a virtual tour last year when I met with the CEO virtually.”
“And they really impressed me,” Biden said.
Rivian, based in California, converted the former Mitsubishi plant in Normal into a facility to make electric sport-utility vehicles and trucks.
Rivian is developing a plant near Atlanta as well.
************************************
24/7 Wall St.
“Rivian Falls Apart”
Story by Douglas A. McIntyre
12 December 2022
Rivian Automotive Inc. recently gave up on a promising deal with one of the world’s premier car and truck companies.
It had a partnership to make vans with Mercedes-Benz Vans.
The arrangement was only three months old.
It is an example of how badly Rivian has struggled to find direction as management gropes toward a future that likely is no longer there.
Rivian is barely in business.
Rivian has another distinction.
It lost $1.7 billion last quarter.
That loss level is usually only posted in bad quarters for the world’s largest car companies.
Rivian did it as one of the smallest.
Rivian faces several buzz saws.
The most powerful of these is the Ford F-150 Lightning.
It is the electric version of the top-selling vehicle in the United States.
This is a distinction the F-150 has held for decades.
Ford likely has at least 6 million of these on the road, giving it a massive customer base to which to market the Lightening.
Elon Musk’s Tesla will start production of the company’s Cybertruck in a year.
Tesla’s brand and spot as the world’s top electric vehicle company give it strong leverage with potential customers.
Rivian’s other challenge is that every major car company will have an electric pickup on the road within two to three years.
While each may only have a modest market share, the avalanche of models will overwhelm Rivian, if it is still around.
Wall Street already has passed its judgment.
Rivian’s stock trades near $26, down from a 52-week high of $121.64.
And in the meantime, as Joe Biden starts trade wars all over the globe with his ultra-nationalistic and isolationist BUY AMERICA policy intended to shut the world out of US markets to MAKE AMERICA GREAT by BUILDING IT BACK BETTER while crippling the economy of China, which is the only possible way Joe Biden could compete with them, the Chinese are stepping up to the plate to raise the ante for Joe and make a contest out of it that the old goofball Biden can’t win, to wit:
Reuters
“Exclusive: China readying $143 bln package for its chip firms in face of U.S. curbs – sources”
By Julie Zhu
December 13, 2022
HONG KONG, Dec 13 (Reuters) – China is working on a more than 1 trillion yuan ($143 billion) support package for its semiconductor industry, three sources said, in a major step towards self sufficiency in chips and to counter U.S. moves aimed at slowing its technological advances.
Beijing plans to roll out what will be one of its biggest fiscal incentive packages over five years, mainly as subsidies and tax credits to bolster semiconductor production and research activities at home, said the sources.
It signals, as analysts have expected, a more direct approach by China in shaping the future of an industry which has become a geopolitical hot button due to soaring demand for chips and which Beijing regards as a cornerstone of its technological might.
It will also likely further raise concerns in the United States and its allies about China’s competition in the semiconductor industry, say analysts.
Some U.S. lawmakers are already worried about China’s chip production capacity build up.
The plan could be implemented as soon as the first quarter of next year, said two of the sources who declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to media.
The majority of the financial assistance would be used to subsidise the purchases of domestic semiconductor equipment by Chinese firms, mainly semiconductor fabrication plants, or fabs, they said.
The fiscal support plan comes after the U.S. Commerce Department passed in October a sweeping set of regulations, which could bar research labs and commercial data centres’ access to advanced AI chips, among other curbs.
The United States has also been lobbying some of its partners, including Japan and the Netherlands, to tighten exports to China of equipment used to make semiconductors.
And U.S. President Joe Biden in August signed a landmark bill to provide $52.7 billion in grants for U.S. semiconductor production and research as well as tax credit for chip plants estimated to be worth $24 billion.
With the incentive package, Beijing aims to step up support for Chinese chip firms to build, expand or modernise domestic facilities for fabrication, assembly, packaging, and research and development, the sources said.
Beijing’s latest plan also includes preferential tax policies for the country’s semiconductor industry, they said.
Achieving self-reliance in technology featured prominently in President Xi Jinping’s full work report at the Communist Party Congress in October.
The term ‘technology’ was referred to 40 times, up from 17 times in the report from the 2017 congress.
Xi’s call for China to “win the battle” in core technologies could signal an overhaul in Beijing’s approach to advancing its tech industry, with more state-led spending and intervention to counter U.S. pressures, analysts have said.
end quotes
Joe Biden. a belligerent, bellicose JINGO, wants war with the rest of the world to show everybody just how much of a REAL HONEST-TO-GOSH TOUGH GUY he really is, so the Chinese are going to give him a good test, and we will likely be the losers for it.
In the meantime, people elsewhere in the world who resent this shallow-thinking, short-sighted, knee-jerking autocrat Jo0e Biden messing with their business plans are standing up and challenging the old fool in public by pointing out just how stupid his CHIP BAN policy really is, which is vintage Joe Biden, to wit:
Reuters
“Dutch chip equipment maker ASML’s CEO questions U.S. export rules on China – newspaper”
December 13, 2022
AMSTERDAM, Dec 13 (Reuters) – The chief executive of ASML Holding NV, the Dutch semiconductor equipment maker, on Tuesday questioned whether a U.S. push to get the Netherlands to adopt new rules restricting exports to China make sense.
“Maybe they think we should come across the table, but ASML has already sacrificed,” CEO Peter Wennink said in an interview with newspaper NRC Handelsblad.
He said that following U.S. pressure, the Dutch government has already restricted ASML from exporting its most advanced lithography machines to China since 2019, something he said has benefited U.S. companies selling alternative technology.
end quotes
With Joe Biden’s ultra-nationalistic and isolationist BUILD BACK BETTER program, it is AMERICA FIRST and screw the rest of the world, which takes us back to that story of the beginnings of a revolt against the stupidity of Joe Biden, to wit:
The Biden administration issued new export rules for U.S. companies in October aimed at cutting off China’s ability to manufacture advanced semiconductor chips in a bid to slow its military and technological advances.
Washington is urging the Netherlands, Japan and other unspecified countries with companies that make cutting edge manufacturing equipment to adopt similar rules.
The Dutch trade minister has confirmed talks are ongoing.
Wennink said it seemed contradictory that U.S. chip manufacturers are able to sell their most advanced chips to Chinese customers, while ASML is only able to sell older chipmaking equipment.
“American chip manufacturers have no problem with China as a customer,” he said.
Meanwhile, “it is common knowledge that chip technology for purely military applications is usually 10, 15 years old.”
“(Yet) the technology used to make such chips can still be sold to China,” he added.
end quotes
And more on that story on China ramping up its capacity to produce those older chips to capture the market away from Joe Biden is yet to come, so stay tuned and don’t touch that dial!
And as Joe does a real bang-up job of alienating not only his multitude of enemies, but his “friends,” as well, who are now seeing Joe as he really is, a clear and present danger to global peace, harmony and stability, we have yet more pushback and thye beginnings of a trade war with Europe, to wit:
“Italy urges EU to give strong and strategic response to U.S. IRA”
Reuters
December 17, 2022
ROME, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Italy’s economy minister on Saturday urged the European Union to give a strong and strategic response to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which he said was posing threats to the national economy.
“Some Italian companies are considering moving production to the U.S. following the IRA scheme, it would be a disaster,” Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said at an event in Rome.
The EU fears that the $430 billion IRA scheme, with its generous tax breaks for domestic production of energy sector components, may lure away EU businesses and disadvantage European companies, from car manufacturers to makers of green technology.
Reuters
“U.S. feeling impact of China COVID changes, can ‘power through it’ -Treasury’s Adeyemo says”
By Andrea Shalal and Trevor Hunnicutt
December 20, 2022
WASHINGTON, Dec 20 (Reuters) – The U.S. economy is “already being impacted” by China’s latest COVID developments and energy shortages in Europe, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said on Tuesday, but it is in better shape than in the past to withstand such pressures.
Adeyemo, in a phone interview with Reuters, said he was feeling confident about the state of the U.S. economy after his trip to Europe last week, given continued momentum in job creation and economic growth, easing inflation and huge investments that would help reduce supply chain shortages in coming years.
“We’re already being impacted by those headwinds … but we’re more able to withstand that and power through it because of the policy choices we’ve made,” he said.
President Joe Biden enters the new year atop a mixed-picture economy that investors and CEOs warn could wither under global pressure and domestic price spikes, while facing a slim Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives likely to block major economic proposals.
He said he “definitely” hoped to join Vice President Kamala Harris on a visit to Africa next year, but gave no details.
*****************************************
We’re already being impacted by those headwinds but we’re more able to withstand that and power through it because of the policy choices Joe Biden and his pack of “BORROW REAL BIG AND SPEND LAVISHLY ON YOUR FRIENDS” Democrats have made?
Do tell, Wally, do tell:
“GlobalFoundries laying off about 220 at Fab 8 in Malta – Company is expecting revenue to drop in 2023, leading to cost cutting measures”
Larry Rulison, Albany, New York Times Union
Dec. 20, 2022
MALTA — GlobalFoundries is laying off roughly 220 employees at its Fab 8 campus at the Luther Forest Technology Campus.
The terminations are part of its ongoing company-wide cost-cutting program.
GlobalFoundries, which employs 14,000 people worldwide, announced earlier this year that it would be laying off about 800 people as it seeks to reduce annual spending by $200 million.
Although the company had just revealed record revenue and profit for the third quarter of 2022, the company is expecting key customers will be reducing its chip orders in the next six months as consumer spending on things like smartphones has suffered during record inflation.
There is also a risk of recession in 2023.
Since chip factories can cost between $5 billion and $15 billion to build and equip with manufacturing equipment, chipmakers can easily start losing money if their factories are not at full capacity.
The GlobalFoundries layoffs are awkward not only because they are being done around the holidays, but because GlobalFoundries and other chipmakers have been campaigning for the past year for Congress to pass the $52 billion CHIPS Act that provides the industry with billions of dollars in subsidies to expand their manufacturing operations in the U.S. as a counterweight to China’s rise and to re-establish the domestic semiconductor supply chain that has increasingly been moved overseas to Asia.
One has to wonder what version of reality Wally Adeyemo, a Nigerian-American government official serving as the United States deputy secretary of the treasury under goofy old Joe Biden, himself a short-sighted, shallow thinker, who was the first president of the Obama Foundation and the director of African American outreach for the John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign, inhabits with his rosy predictions of our economic future, because the dude seems clueless as to what is happening in the real world outside of Washington that Wally has never really been in, being the political creature that he is, like Joe Biden, feeding off the American taxpayers like a parasite while being rewarded with a sinecure for political services rendered to the party:
Reuters
“Micron sets 10% job cuts in 2023 due to ‘supply-demand mismatch'”
By Akash Sriram and Jane Lanhee Lee
December 21, 2022
Dec 21 (Reuters) – Chipmaker Micron Technology Inc on Wednesday forecast a much steeper-than-expected second-quarter loss and said it will lay off 10% of its workforce next year, citing a nagging glut in the semiconductor market.
“Due to the significant supply demand mismatch entering calendar 2023, we expect that profitability will remain challenged throughout 2023,” Micron chief executive Sanjay Mehrotra said.
Micron’s shares fell over 1% in extended trading.
They have fallen about 45% so far this year.
Red-hot inflation, rising interest rates, geopolitical tensions and COVID-19 lockdowns in China have led businesses and consumers to rein in expenses, hitting the PC and smartphone market and in turn the business of chip makers.
The situation was a quick U-turn from chip shortages last year that hit everything from laptops to car makers.
Micron, the first major chip maker to alert the market of the downturn over the summer, previously said it would be cutting investments in 2023.
It was not clear what its previous 2024 investment plans were.
I’m thinking that if Wally and Joe can pony up another TRILLION of borrowed money with a “SAVE THE PROFITS OF THE CHIP FAB OPERATORS ACT,” which funds they can use to make a STRATEGIC CHIP RESERVE where they guarantee to purchase ALL the chips these CHIP FABS are producing, regardless of whether there is a use or need for them anywhere, you know, keep them on storage in government warehouses until the day comes when they can be used for something, that Joe and Wally can perform a real economical miracle and turn not only the industry around and make them profitable, which will be good for their shareholders, including Nancy and Paul Pelosi, but give the stock market a real good goose, as well, which takes us to the reality we all live in who are outside of the NEVER-NEVER LAND of Washington, D.C., also known as CLOUD CUCKOO LAND where everything is rosy all the time because Joe Biden and Wally say it is so, to wit:
Reuters
“Wall Street tumbles on rate, recession worries, bleak chipmaker outlook”
By Sinéad Carew and Ankika Biswas
December 22, 2022
Dec 22 (Reuters) – Wall Street’s major averages closed sharply lower on Thursday with the technology-heavy Nasdaq leading declines amid investor worries that data showing a resilient economy would lead the U.S. Federal Reserve to keep hiking interest rates for longer than feared.
Micron Technology Inc’s glum forecast added to the downbeat mood and caused the semiconductor index to sharply underperform the broader market.
By 4:00PM ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 348.26 points, or 1.04%, to 33,028.22, the S&P 500 lost 55.84 points, or 1.44%, to 3,822.6 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 233.25 points, or 2.18%, to 10,476.12.
The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index sold off sharply while Micron’s equipment supplier Lam Research was leading the sector’s declines throughout the session.
Fifty comments, 49 by one individual!
It would be safe to say, he’s not open-minded
There is no requirement for him to be…
Tis true that I do not have to be open-minded in here, about anything, it being America and freedom of expression and all of that which makes America different from say, Ukraine under the autocrat Zelensky.
However, any sane and rational person who follows the different episodes of the Cape Charles Mirror, a grand palladium of liberty in America, would rapidly come to the conclusion that it would be foolish in the extreme here in the Cape Charles Mirror where on can expect to be challenged at any point, on any point, which is what makes the Cape Charles Mirror unique in the America of today, where otherwise the voices of small people like myself would never be heard, especially today with more and more Ruling Democrat Party censorship being imposed on us through the agency of the Democrat-controlled Federal Bureau of Investigation, to be close-minded, believing because I said it, it had to be right.
Au contraire, Chas – as an engineer, I have to be very open minded as to the possibility I could be wrong.
Is it a sign that I am not “open minded” because I happen to think Joe Biden’s declaration of economic war against China that is hurting American businesses by stripping them of access to global markets is a sign of madness and insanity on the part of Joe Biden?
Would I be “open minded” if I thought it was a good thing that Joe Biden was hurting American businesses with his economic war on China?
Or just stupid?
The Register
“US pressures Asian allies to join crusade against Chinese chipmakers”
Story by Tobias Mann
9 January 2023
US efforts to starve China’s semiconductor and tech industry of chips has entered a new phase: pressuring its allies to join its cause.…
Speaking with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida Sunday, US ambassador Rahm Emanuel emphasized the importance of a unified front restricting semiconductor exports to China, Bloomberg reports.
The talks come days before President Joe Biden is scheduled to meet with Kishida during a summit on Friday.
The US may be a major source of semiconductor intellectual property and patents, but the majority of chip manufacturing remains centered in the Asia Pacific.
As such, any efforts by the US to cut off China’s semiconductor industry will require the support of its allies.
In addition to Japan, the ambassador also reportedly highlighted the importance of South Korea — home to Samsung Electronics, the second-largest contract semiconductor manufacturer — and the Netherlands — home to ASML, which produces chipmaking equipment used in leading edge manufacturing.
Since the passage of the $280 billion US Chips and Science Act this summer, the Biden administration has stepped up its efforts to stifle China’s semiconductor industry.
Last fall, the US Commerce Department barred equipment vendors LAM research, KLA Corp, and Applied Materials from exporting their goods to Chinese chipmakers without explicit licensing.
In addition to denying access to chipmaking equipment, the Biden administration has also targeted Chinese chipmakers directly.
Last fall the Commerce Department added China’s largest memory manufacturer Yangtze Memory Technologies Company (YMTC) along with 35 other companies to its “Entity List.”
The move effectively banned the sale and export of US goods to these companies.
The Commerce Department has had some success cutting off Chinese access to foreign fabs and equipment vendors.
Under pressure from the US, the Dutch government blocked ASML from selling both its extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) and deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines in China.
It’s unclear how ASML’s revenues could be affected by the decision.
The company’s China business accounts for roughly 15 percent of its annual revenues.
Some quick back-of-napkin math shows that cut off from the Middle Kingdom, ASML stands to lose more than $3 billion in annual revenues.
US sanctions have also hampered TSMC’s ability to do business with Chinese chipmakers.
Late last year, TSMC was reportedly forced to halt production of new GPUs for Chinese Alibaba and Biren because they exceeded performance limits set by US trade restrictions.
The US trade war against China certainly hasn’t been popular with TSMC.
During an industry event last month its CEO CC Wei complained that US efforts had hamstrung the company’s ability to do business.
His comments echoed those of TSMC founder Morris Chang who recently claimed globalization was on its last leg.
US sanctions are also expected to cost US equipment vendors billions in revenues over the next 12 months.
Following a ban on chipmaking equipment last fall, Lam Research warned investors that lost business in China would cost the company as much as $2.5 billion in revenues in 2023.
And in November, Applied Materials told investors US sanctions could end up costing the company as much as $2.5 billion in 2023, or about 10 percent of the company’s revenues in 2022.
According to accounts, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, the location where some of the classified documents Joe Biden has stashed here and there, has or had a mission of engaging “fellow citizens in shaping this world, while ensuring the gains of global engagement are widely shared.”
Who exactly those “fellow citizens” might in fact be is never mentioned, nor is mention made of the world they are trying to shape the way Joe Biden wants it shaped.
But from Joe’s unceasing and unrelenting economic war on China that Joe is trying to get other countries to be stupid and join, China isn’t allowed to be a part of the “CLUB,” to wit:
Reuters
“U.S. talks with Japanese, Dutch to yield no immediate China chip export curbs – source”
By Alexandra Alper
January 12, 2023
WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (Reuters) – The White House will discuss a recent crackdown on exports of chip-making tools to China with Japanese and Dutch officials during upcoming visits, but they will not result in “immediate” pledges from the two countries to impose similar curbs, a person familiar with U.S. officials’ thinking said on Thursday.
The Biden administration in October published a sweeping set of export controls, including measures tightly restricting Chinese access to U.S. chipmaking technology, as part of a bid to slow Beijing’s technological and military advances.
But it has not yet convinced key allies to put in place similar equipment curbs seen as essential to making the restrictions effective, since Japanese and Dutch firms Tokyo Electron Ltd and ASML Holding NV also are top producers of chipmaking equipment.
Upcoming meetings between U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the White House on Friday and next Tuesday, respectively, will provide forums to discuss the issue, said a person briefed on U.S. officials’ thinking.
And it is not enough for him that the shallow-thinking, short-sighted Joe Biden has declared economic warfare on Russia and China, so he had to add Europe to his list of targets to attack, as well, which is leading to this backlash from Joe’s ostensible “allies,” to wit:
The Associated Press
“EU seeking to offset Biden’s green plans with own subsidies”
Story by Raf Casert
16 January 2023
BRUSSELS (AP) — From Paris to Stockholm and Brussels, European Union leaders and member nations were putting forward moves Monday to ensure the 27-nation bloc would not be left behind by the United States in the green industry race.
Talk of huge subsidies to prop up companies at home and fears of a race to the bottom that allows domestic production to muscle out competition are set to dominate the EU’s political agenda right up to a special economic summit Feb. 9-10.
The tipping point came when the $369 billion U.S. Inflation Reduction Act was approved last summer, which EU leaders see as an attempt to cut European firms out of the lucrative American market for clean energy technology like electric vehicles and excessively favors a “made-in-America” approach that discriminates against European multinationals.
Ever more forceful, EU nations want to counter it.
“We need to send a strong message that we will act to safeguard our industrial base.”
“It is crucial that the EU remains an attractive place to invest, innovate and produce,” EU Council President Charles Michel said Monday in Stockholm.
Not only does France want speed, it also wants much bigger subsidies.
“We want state aid that can be much more massive for certain sectors that we clearly identify — hydrogen, electric batteries, solar panels, semiconductors,” Le Maire said.
“There is not a moment to lose.”
Ever since the IRA was approved, the EU has been seeking to dull its sharpest measures, especially enticements offered for the production of electric vehicles on U.S. soil.
And let’s take a look at the subsidy war Joe Biden has triggered with his declaration of isolationism, nationalism, Jingoism and economic war against Europe, where European nations are now going to bribe U.S. chip makers to build their chip fabs in Europe, not here, by offering them bigger bribes, er, sorry, “economic subsidies,” than the bribes Joe Biden can pay them to build here instead by going to this Reuters article titled “Intel is committed to Germany chip plant, working with government – exec” by Jane Lanhee Lee and Hakan Ersen on January 17, 2023, where we have as follows on that subkiect, to wit:
HALF MOON BAY, Calif/FRANKFURT, Jan 17 (Reuters) – U.S. chip giant Intel Corp is committed to building its chip fabrication plant, or fab, in Magdeburg, Germany and is working out funding details with the government, according to Chief Global Operations Officer Keyvan Esfarjani.
end quotes
“Funding details” is a modern-day euphemism for “how big a bribe will you pay me to build here instead of in the US?”
Getting back to the story:
“We are committed to making the Magdeburg project successful,” Esfarjani told Reuters on the sidelines of Industry Strategy Symposium, a chip conference by Semi last week in Half Moon Bay, California.
“While we have to pace ourselves in this current environment, we can’t take our eye off the ball.”
The comments come after regional newspaper Volksstimme reported last month that Intel has backed away from its original target of starting chip factory construction in the eastern German city in the first half of 2023, saying the semiconductor giant wanted more public subsidies.
end quotes
“More public subsidies” is another modern-day euphemism for “how big a bribe will you pay me to build here instead of in the US?”
Going back to Reuters, we have more on that story of who can now pay the biggest bribes to get a chip fab built near them, to wit:
When asked about Intel’s investment, Germany’s economy ministry’s spokesperson told Reuters the government was in “constant exchange with Intel and the European Commission” about the project.
“The type and (maximum possible) amount of funding depends on approval by the EU Commission – and for this, clear benchmarks and data on the company’s project are needed.”
The newspaper report said inflation was increasing costs.
Esfarjani declined to comment on that but said, since the announcement, “geopolitical challenges have become greater, semiconductor demand has declined and inflation and recession are disrupting the global economy.”
end quotes
The statement about “geopolitical challenges have become greater” is of course a direct reference to the global disruption the isolationist and nationalistic policies of the Jingo Joe Biden has caused, and make note as well of the statement “semiconductor demand has declined,” which takes us back to Reuters once again, to wit:
He pointed out that Intel already purchased the land where the fab will be built late last year.
In March Intel announced Magdeburg as the site for its new mega chip manufacturing complex, a key part of its $88 billion investment drive across Europe.
Governments in Europe are still jockeying for Intel’s investments.
Last week Italy’s government also reiterated that it was determined to secure an investment by Intel.
end quotes
And that is the news!
And as we see in this Rigzone article titled “Biden’s Climate Plan Is ‘Dangerous’ Says UK Business Secretary” by Bloomberg & Ellen Milligan & Francine Lacqua on January 20, 2023, Joe has added the Brits to his list of countries he is waging economic war against, at least from the perspective of the Brits, to wit:
President Joe Biden’s plan to subsidize clean energy is “dangerous” and risks pushing the world toward protectionism, UK Business Secretary Grant Shapps said, in Britain’s strongest criticism to date of the US Inflation Reduction Act.
European Union leaders say the US legislation will unfairly benefit American firms and violate World Trade Organization rules.
To date, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s administration has stayed relatively quiet on the issue, despite recent warnings from inside his own Conservative Party that the UK risks missing out on the economic opportunities of the green energy transition.
But at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Shapps on Thursday indicated that Britain shares EU concerns while appearing reluctant to respond with its own protectionist measures.
“It’s very important we don’t slip into protectionism and that is where at the edges, the Inflation Reduction Act in the US is dangerous because it could slip into protection,” Shapps said in a panel discussion.
The legislation, a key component of Biden’s agenda, includes energy tax credits, climate programs and environmental mandates which European leaders are concerned will lure investment that would otherwise flow to Europe.
This month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen responded by unveiling a “Net-Zero Industry Act” aimed at increasing funding for green technologies.
The UK, meanwhile, is continuing to express its concerns privately to the US.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV later on Thursday, Shapps said that while he welcomes large parts of the legislation and recognizes “the US has a lot of catching up to do,” some of it is “not just anti-competitive, but protectionist.”
So, by way of review here, on July 28, 2022, Joe Biden published his “Statement from President Biden on House Passage of CHIPS and Science Act to Lower Costs, Create Good-Pay Jobs and Strengthen Our National Security,” where Joe told us as follows, to wit:
“Today, the House passed a bill that will make cars cheaper, appliances cheaper, and computers cheaper.”
“It will lower the costs of everyday goods.”
“And, it will create high-paying manufacturing jobs across the country and strengthen U.S. leadership in the industries of the future at the same time.”
end quotes
Of course, that was then and this is now which takes us to this Reuters article titled “Intel sees more losses as PC makers sharply cut chip buying; shares slump” by Jane Lanhee Lee and Chavi Mehta on January 26, 2023, where we have reality as it exists in the real world, not the dream world of Joe Biden, to wit:
Jan 26 (Reuters) – Intel Corp said on Thursday it expects to lose money in the current quarter, surprising investors with a bleaker-than-expected outlook for both the PC market and slowing growth in its key data center division.
Two of Intel’s most important markets are showing signs of weakness after two years of strong growth as remote work boomed during the pandemic.
Now, the PC industry is struggling with a glut of chips after demand for consumer electronics fell off a cliff and business customers wary of a recession are slowing spending on data centers.
end quotes
So what is Joe Biden’s solution for that – build more chip fabs with taxpayer money because in a falling market, we obviously need to spend taxpayer dollars on the ability to make even more chips, which is insane, which takes us back to Reuters for more, as follows:
“We expect some of the largest inventory corrections literally that we’ve ever seen in the industry taking place that’s affecting the Q1 guide in a meaningful way,” Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger told Reuters.
“Everything hinges on the PC market recovery.”
“AMD isn’t immune to this either,” said Wayne Lam, an analyst at CCS Insight about Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
“Don’t think we’ve seen the bottom for INTC…”
“They are not running a sustainable business model.”
Intel expects profit margins to fall further after dropping from 58.4% in the fourth quarter of 2020 to 39.2% in the fourth quarter of 2022.
“Its safe to say that ambitions to return to a 60% margin in the future is light years away,” said CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino.
Shares of other microchip companies fell as well, with AMD down 2.6% and Nvidia Corp down 2%.
PC shipments fell 16.5% to 292.3 million units in 2022, per data from research firm IDC, forcing chipmakers to cut back production and slash revenue forecasts.
Shrinking PC demand also pressured Microsoft Corp’s More Personal Computing segment, which includes Windows, devices and search revenue, leading to a 19% drop in the segment in its second quarter.
Meanwhile, the data center market has also slowed from double-digit growth as businesses cut costs to ride out an economic slowdown.
Reuters
“Intel’s ‘historic collapse’ erases $8 billion from market value”
By Aditya Soni and Nivedita Balu
January 27, 2023
Jan 27 (Reuters) – Intel Corp saw about $8 billion wiped off its market value on Friday after the U.S. chipmaker stumped Wall Street with dismal earnings projections, fanning fears around a slump in the personal-computer market.
The company predicted a surprise loss for the first quarter and its revenue forecast was $3 billion below estimates as it also struggled with slowing growth in the data center business.
Intel supplier KLA Corp settled 6.9% lower after its dismal forecast.
****************************
Reuters
“Chip equipment maker KLA’s third-quarter forecasts disappoint, shares sink”
Reuters
January 26, 2023
Jan 26 (Reuters) – U.S. chip toolmaker KLA Corp on Thursday forecast third-quarter revenue and profit below Wall Street estimates, the latest company to signal a hit from easing demand as customers seek to reduce excess inventory.
The company’s shares fell more than 5% in trading after the bell.
KLA had earlier said its systems & service revenues could be affected in the near term by the U.S. export regulations on the sale of U.S. semiconductor technology to China.
And let us face facts and reality here as mature, rational thinking adults, this as Joe Biden and the Democrats continue their efforts to build back better to make America great again by a policy of America first, which means elbowing other countries, starting with China, another hated enemy of Joe Biden and the Democrats, along with Russia, both run by “autocrats” who pose a real serious threat to our “sacred democracy” that Joe and the Democrats are champions of, out of the way of a resurgent America led forth on the world stage by Joe Biden, because China, people, is like a serpent in the Garden of Eden Joe and the Democrats are promising, and so it is the duty of Joe Biden today to crush the head of the serpent, for the good of the world that sorely needs the stern, guiding hand of Joe Biden to lead it into a Pax Biden that will last for a thousand years by destroying China’s economy along with the economies of Germany and Russia, but really, people, does that matter, that to make America great again by building it back better by a policy of America First?
Today, people, in our times, not the times of some forgotten yesterday in America when things were different, before equity, now that the JANUARY REVOLUTION is over and our Republic has been overthrown, and the Marxist Dictatorship of the Proletariat has been established in its place at the national level here in the United States of America with the ascension of the God-like Joe Biden into the oval office, we are seeing the beginning of “Bidenism,” which like Stalinism before it, is based on based on centralization, extreme nationalism, isolationism, and totalitarianism.
As we saw in a Reuters article entitled “U.S. Speaker Pelosi: Capitalism has not served our economy as well as it could” by Reuters on September 17, 2021, according to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, capitalism has not served the U.S. economy as well as it could have, and it needed to be improved, and hence, Bidenism, where all industry is brought under rigid government control in the name of national security
As to BIDENISM, it is an all-embracing doctrine which demands a one hundred percent surrender of the individual will in the name of mystical nationalism – with ends not clearly defined.
This nationalism is beyond good and evil, and thus is deified.
Therefore, BIDENISM should properly be classed as a kind of religion like fascism and communism, the latter based on class-consciousness, the former on nationalism.
BIDENISM, in simple terms, is defined as a one party system of government with the Democrats in charge of everything, and in which each class have their distinct place, function, and representation in the government, while the individual, that being us, is subordinated to the state and control is maintained by military forces, secret police, rigid censorship, and governmental regimentation of industry and finance, which takes us to this Reuters article titled “Japan, Netherlands to join U.S. in restricting chip equipment exports to China, Bloomberg reports” on January 27, 2023, where we have the following example of BIDENISM being put into action to protect America from China, to wit:
TOKYO, Jan 27 (Reuters) – Japan and the Netherlands will soon agree to join the United States in restricting exports of semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China, Bloomberg News reported.
Talks between the countries will conclude as early as Friday, with the Netherlands restricting ASML Holding NV from selling machines to China used to make certain types of advanced chips, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Japan would impose similar restrictions on Nikon Corp, the report said.
Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara, a government spokesperson, said Japan would make “appropriate steps” based on the United States’ and other nations’ regulatory moves.
He declined to comment further when asked about the report at a Friday afternoon media briefing.
The Dutch foreign ministry declined comment.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who has said he expects to reach agreement with the United States and other allies on stricter controls but that the Netherlands will not simply adopt U.S. rules, will take questions at his weekly news briefing later on Friday.
Sources have told Reuters that a deal between Dutch and U.S. officials could be clinched by the end of the month as representatives from the two countries meet in Washington on Friday.
Getting the Netherlands and Japan to impose tighter export controls on China would be a major diplomatic win for U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, which in October announced sweeping restrictions on Beijing’s access to U.S. chipmaking technology to slow its technological and military advances.
Without Japanese or Dutch cooperation, U.S. companies would face a competitive disadvantage.
“We have been in discussion with the United States and other countries regarding the export-control regime,” Yasutoshi Nishimura, Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, told reporters on Friday.
“We will implement any measures in accordance with our Foreign Exchange Law and through international cooperation,” he added, declining to provide further details.
While Nikon could be affected, the Japanese company most likely to be affected by new restrictions will be chip manufacturing machinery maker Tokyo Electron, which relies on China for about a quarter of its sales, said Masahiko Hosokawa, a Meisei University professor and former director general of trade control at the ministry.
“A balance needs to be struck so no one among Japan, the United States and Europe will be disproportionately disadvantaged.”
“It’s about fairness,” he said.
Dutch officials have insisted that fresh controls address national security concerns rather than favour U.S. chip-related companies, a source familiar with the discussions told Reuters.
If anybody recalls, because my goodness, it was more than a day ago, there was a time in America not that long ago where people were quite literally locked in their houses, looking for something to do, like on-line gambling, or playing the stock market with free stimulus money, or “gaming,” or actually working from home as some people were doing, all of which created an ARTIFICIAL DEMAND for computers, servers, etc. which Joe Biden in his vincible ignorance was the way it was always going to be, so he is wasting billions of taxpayer dollars building what is excess chip-making capacity using taxpayer dollars, as we see from the following, to wit:
CNBC
“AMD beats on sales and profit but warns of a 10% revenue decline in Q1”
Kif Leswing
January 31, 2023
AMD reported fourth-quarter earnings on Tuesday, beating Wall Street expectations for sales and profit, but guided analysts to a 10% decline in year-over-year sales in the current quarter.
AMD reported earnings as many of its rival chipmakers have stumbled in recent weeks, citing lower consumer demand for finished electronics and gluts of parts needed to make PCs and servers.
Intel, AMD’s primary competitor, reported a disastrous quarter last week that included a weak 2023 outlook including a 40% year-over-year decline in sales in the March quarter.
While AMD said it saw slow sales for its PC chips and graphics processors, it said its data center segment rose 42% year-over-year, suggesting it took market share from Intel.
But its client group, which includes sales from PC processors, was down 51% year-over-year because of a slumping PC market, AMD said.
It added that its customers have too much inventory of its chips, a theme other semiconductor companies have mentioned in recent weeks.
The global PC market is in a protracted slowdown, according to estimates.
AMD CEO Lisa Su told analysts that the company expects the total PC market to be down about 10% in 2023, and said the PC environment was “weak.”
AMD’s gaming business, which is comprised of graphics cards and chips for gaming consoles, was down 7% year-over-year.
AMD expects that the segments with PC chips and graphics processors will continue to decline in the current quarter, but data center and embedded sales will grow.
And this was then:
THE PANTAGRAPH
“Watch now: Biden touts Rivian in electric vehicle speech”
Feb 9, 2022
NORMAL — President Joe Biden on Tuesday included Rivian Automotive in his remarks about electric vehicle manufacturing and infrastructure.
“Since 2021, companies have announced investments totaling more than $200 billion in domestic manufacturing here in America, from iconic companies like GM and Ford building out new electric vehicle production; to Tesla, our nation’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer; to innovative younger companies like Rivian, building electric trucks, or Proterra, building electric buses, which I saw at a virtual tour last year when I met with the CEO virtually.”
“And they really impressed me,” Biden said.
*********************************
While this is now:
Reuters
“Exclusive: EV maker Rivian to cut 6% of jobs amid price war – internal memo”
By Abhirup Roy and Akash Sriram
February 1, 2023
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 1 (Reuters) – Rivian Automotive is laying off 6% of its workforce in an effort to cut costs as the EV maker, already grappling with falling cash reserves and a weak economy, braces for an industry-wide price war.
end quotes
The weak economy, of course, is thanks to the failed economic policies of Joe Biden, which takes us back for more, as follows:
Layoffs at Rivian come amid falling EV prices kicked off by cuts made recently by Elon Musk-led Tesla and Ford Motor Co.
The price cuts by Tesla and Ford are expected to hurt EV upstarts such as Rivian, Lucid Group and British startup Arrival, which Monday said it would lay off half its staff.
Despite a blockbuster initial public offering in November 2021, Rivian’s shares have fallen nearly 90% from their peak that month to Tuesday’s close.
Rivian’s stock was trading down 4% on Nasdaq on Wednesday, paring some losses after news of the job cuts.
‘BLEEDING CASH’
“They’re bleeding cash and would like to grow at a much faster rate, but they continue to struggle with their EV production ramp and have been unable to meaningfully drive down unit costs,” CFRA Research analyst Garrett Nelson said.
“We think that is what’s behind this decision.”
Rivian is focusing on ramping up production of its R1 trucks and EDV delivery vans for top shareholder Amazon.com, and launching its R2 platform, he said.
“The changes we are announcing today reflect this focused roadmap.”
Irvine, California-based Rivian, which has about 14,000 employees, will let go of about 840 staff in a move that will not affect manufacturing operations at its plant in Normal, Illinois.
Rivian, which has been losing money on every vehicle it builds, narrowly missed its full-year production target of 25,000 vehicles last year as it dealt with supply-chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
It had previously halved that target.
To further conserve its cash, Rivian late last year shelved plans to build delivery vans in Europe with Mercedes.
Rivian had earlier pushed back by a year to 2026 the planned launch of a smaller R2 vehicle family at the $5 billion plant it is building in Georgia.
Last July, Rivian, which is scheduled to report fourth-quarter results on Feb. 28, laid off staff and suspended some programs as part of a broader restructuring.
As was stated above, and who of us today over the age of twelve, besides Joe Biden, that is, can’t remember it, there was a time in America when we were all quite literally, by government decree, quite literally locked in our houses, with the result that people, like all incarcerated people denied their freedom, were looking for something to do, like on-line gambling with free stimulus money provided by the federal government, or playing the stock market with free stimulus money, or “gaming,” while some were actually working from home, ALL of which created an ARTIFICIAL DEMAND for computers, servers, etc. which Joe Biden in his vincible ignorance thought was the way it was always going to be, with the result that he now is wasting billions of taxpayer dollars building what is excess chip-making capacity using taxpayer dollars, which takes us back to the reality we are all confronted with, which reality Joe remains totally unaware of, as he touts just how great he and his “ECONOMICAL PLAN” really are, if only we could “un-blind” ourselves, to wit:
Reuters
“Dell to slash over 6,000 jobs amid ‘uncertain market future'”
By Eva Mathews
February 6, 2023
Feb 6 (Reuters) – Dell Technologies Inc is cutting about 6,650 jobs, or 5% of its global workforce, as it struggles with a slump in the personal computer market and braces for a potential recession.
Dell had already rolled out cost-cutting moves such as a hiring pause and limits on travel as it dealt with a post-pandemic collapse in PC sales, which account more than half of its revenue.
However, those moves are “no longer enough”, co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke wrote in a memo to employees.
“What we know is market conditions continue to erode with an uncertain future,” Clarke said.
Rival HP Inc has also said it will cut up to 6,000 jobs.
The market for PCs and tablets is set for another year of decline in 2023 with a fall of 2.6%, according to research firm IDC, after rapid growth during the pandemic on the back of remote working.
To put all this ultranationalism and isolationism and economic warfare being waged on other nations by Joe Biden into its proper context, we need to go back to the beginning of the reign of the autocrat Joe Biden as a “world leader,” or as Joe sees himself, the actual true leader of the world so that all other leaders of other countries and mere tributaries (a person or state that pays tribute to another state or ruler) of Joe, and to do that, we need to go back to “Remarks by President Biden Before the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly” on September 21, 2021, eight months into the reign of Joe, where we have Joe as a world leader laying out his vision for all the other world leaders, including Putin in Russia, and Xi in China, to adhere to and follow to fulfill Joe’s vision of his BUILD BACK BETTER WORLD, where we have Joe as follows:
THE PRESIDENT: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the clear and urgent choice that we face here at the dawning of what must be a decisive decade for our world — a decade that will quite literally determine our futures.
As a global community, we’re challenged by urgent and looming crises wherein lie enormous opportunities if — if — we can summon the will and resolve to seize these opportunities.
end quotes
Joe is seizing those opportunities by a policy of ultranationalism called AMERICA FIRST and isolationism called MADE IN AMERICA coupled with economic warfare intended to cripple the economies of Joe’s competitors because that is the only way Joe knows how to win the RACE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, by destroying the free market and competition.
Going back to 21 September 2021 and Jo9e at the UN, we have more BIDENISM as follows:
Simply put: We stand, in my view, at an inflection point in history.
And I’m here today to share with you how the United States intends to work with partners and allies to answer these questions and the commitment of my new administration to help lead the world toward a more peaceful, prosperous future for all people.
end quotes
Fast forward to today, with Joe doing his level best to destroy the economies of other countries Joe can’t compete with, and it is clear that Joe never intended to help lead the world toward a more peaceful, prosperous future for all people, only some in this country.
Going back to Joe then, 2021, setting in motion that which we are dealing with now in this thread, we have, more Joe, as follows:
To deliver for our own people, we must also engage deeply with the rest of the world.
end quote
Yeah, right, Joe, tell us about it:
To ensure that our own future, we must work together with other partners — our partners — toward a shared future.
end quote
Right on, Joe, you da man:
Our security, our prosperity, and our very freedoms are interconnected, in my view, as never before.
end quotes
Say it like you see it, Joe, and that’s a real righteous sentiment, alright:
And so, I believe we must work together as never before.
end quote
Uh, yeah, right, Joe, sounds good dude.
So how come you aren’t doing that, then, Joe?
IF we must work together as never before, why are you isolating us from that world you say we have to work together with?
Help us out, Joe, because something sure does not make sense here.
How do your policies of ultranationalism and isolationism equate with our working with the world to secure a better future for all of us as opposed to just your Democrats?
Reuters
“Intel cuts dividend to lowest since 2007 to save cash”
Reuters
February 22, 2023
Feb 22 (Reuters) – Intel Corp on Wednesday cut its dividend payout to its lowest in 16 years and decided to scale back big investments to save cash amid slowing demand for its chips used in personal computers and data centers.
The company, which reaffirmed its first-quarter forecast issued in January, said it will cut the dividend to 50 cents per share annually or $0.125 per share quarterly, a drop of 66% from its last payout.
“While painful, this was a necessary step in ensuring capital is available for their manufacturing plan,” Credit Suisse analyst Chris Caso said.
Demand for Intel’s chips have cooled after two years of strong growth during the pandemic-led remote work, leading the chipmaker to warn in January that it would lose money in the first quarter.
******************
Yahoo Finance
“Biden official drops new details on how it will spend $50 billion on semiconductors”
Story by Ben Werschkul
23 February 2023
The Biden administration is unveiling new details of how it will seek to get the most bang for the billions it has at its disposal to spur the semiconductor sector in the U.S.
The centerpiece of the plans, which Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will unveil during a speech Thursday, is the creation of at least two semiconductor manufacturing and research hubs in the U.S.
These sites — she hopes — will create new U.S. manufacturing and research capabilities and supply chains that will generate momentum for the sector even after the government money runs out.
According to advance excerpts of the remarks, Raimondo will compare the effort to major moments in U.S. history and say ”the CHIPS and Science Act presents us with an opportunity to make investments that are similarly consequential for our nation’s future.”
Raimondo will speak at Georgetown University in the latest phase of her heady task of handing out about $50 billion in government funds to spur semiconductor manufacturing and research in the years ahead.
The money was approved in 2022 when President Biden signed the CHIPs and Science Act into law.
The speech also comes after months of intense lobbying from semiconductor companies.
Companies like Intel; Micron, IBM and even the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company have already scored visits from President Biden to tout plans for new U.S. plants in the works and they appear well position to take large pieces of the coming windfall.
The Commerce Secretary gave reporters a preview Wednesday saying she’ll be focused on America’s national security imperatives in the speech— and what the semiconductor fabrication plants and research facilities will look like.
The ambition is for the U.S. to supplant places like Taiwan, South Korea, and China to become the “premier destination” for the sector, said Raimondo.
She added that “every chip company will need to be in the United States of America long after the subsidy runs out because they will have to and want to be here because we will have built that ecosystem.”
CNBC
“Ford to move forward with $3.5 billion EV battery plant with Chinese company”
Michael Wayland
February 13, 2023
DETROIT – Ford Motor said Monday it will collaborate with a Chinese supplier on a new $3.5 billion battery plant for electric vehicles in Michigan, despite tensions between the U.S. and China.
Farley said the company has “absolutely” been talking to the Biden administration about the plant, citing the IRA incentives to assist with the American manufacturing of battery cells.
He said the “economics in the IRA really made a difference.”
Ford said it expects the production of the battery cells to qualify for federal incentives of $35 per kilowatt hour produced and $10 per module.
The new LFP plant is in addition to Ford’s collaborations with LG Energy Solution and South Korea-based SK, including a joint venture for twin lithium-ion battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky.
The automaker said it expects to begin offering the LFP batteries in the Mustang Mach-E later this year, followed by the F-150 Lightning pickup next year.
************************************
CNBC
“Ford halts production and shipments of its electric F-150 Lightning due to potential battery issue”
Michael Wayland
February 14, 2023
DETROIT – Ford Motor has paused production and shipments of its electric F-150 Lightning pickup due to a potential battery issue, the company said Tuesday.
Ford spokeswoman Emma Bergg declined to disclose details of the possible battery issue, which is being investigated after a vehicle displayed a potential problem as part of the automaker’s pre-delivery quality inspections.
The stop-shipment order and halt in production was issued at the beginning of last week, according to Bergg.
It adds to ongoing “execution issues” detailed to investors earlier this month by Ford CEO Jim Farley that crippled the automaker’s fourth-quarter earnings.
Ford has not established a timeline for when production and the shipments will resume, according to Bergg.
“The team is diligently working on the root cause analysis,” she said, adding the company is “doing the right thing by our customers” to resolve any potential issues before resuming production and shipments.
The halt in production and shipments was first reported Tuesday by Motor Authority.
The F-150 Lightning is being closely watched by investors, as it’s the first mainstream electric pickup truck on the market and a major launch for Ford.
Automakers routinely have issues and recalls associated with vehicles but problems with batteries are of particular concern and interest, as the automakers invest billions of dollars in the vehicles.
One of the most notable issues has been with General Motors’ Chevrolet Bolt EVs.
The Detroit automaker two years ago had to recall all of the vehicles built up until then to address fire issues caused by “rare manufacturing defects” at facilities of its battery supplier LG Battery Solution.
************************************
Bloomberg
“Ford F-150 Lightning Plant Halt Began Feb. 5 After Battery Fire”
Story by Keith Naughton
16 February 2023
(Bloomberg) — Ford Motor Co. halted production of the F-150 Lightning on Feb. 5 — earlier than previously known — following a battery fire in one of the automaker’s popular plug-in pickup trucks.
The fire erupted in one vehicle late on Feb. 4 in a holding lot near the plant in Dearborn, Michigan, before spreading to two nearby trucks.
The newly disclosed details show the extent of the disruption for a key model that has helped the automaker become the No. 2 seller of EVs in America, behind Tesla Inc.
Ford has said the plant will remain closed at least through next week, costing Ford a minimum of three weeks of production.
“During a standard Lightning pre-delivery quality check, one vehicle displayed a battery issue and caught fire,” Ford said in the statement.
Ford said it believes its engineers found the root cause of the fire and that it could take several weeks to apply the lessons learned from the investigation.
************************************
Reuters
“Ford halts F-150 EV production for another week after battery fire”
Reuters
February 24, 2023
Feb 24 (Reuters) – Ford Motor Co will halt production of its electric F-150 Lightning pickup for another week following a battery issue that caused an EV truck to catch fire earlier this month, the U.S. automaker said on Friday.
The development comes days after The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it is holding talks with Ford over the issue.
SK On, a South Korean EV battery maker and supplier to Ford, has again started building battery cells at a plant in Georgia.
“It will take SK time to ensure they are back to building high-quality cells and to deliver them to the Lightning production line,” Ford said in a statement.
“We agree with SK On’s recommended changes in their equipment and processes for SK’s cell production lines.”
Last week, the automaker said it will continue to hold already-produced vehicles while it worked through engineering and process updates.
The fire incident involving Ford’s EV truck happened on Feb. 4, during a pre-delivery quality inspection at its Dearborn, Michigan plant, causing the company to halt production the next day.
************************************
24/7 Wall St.
“Ford’s Deepening Problems”
Story by Douglas A. McIntyre
25 February 2023
Ford will need to extend the shutdown of F-150 Lightning production for another week.
It indicates that Ford’s overall process to create and build cars is worse than what management indicated.
According to CNBC, Ford said battery supplier SK had been slower than expected in addressing the issue.
Ford needs SK “to ensure they are back to building high-quality cells and to deliver them to the Lightning production line,” according to CNBC.
The entire catastrophe puts Executive Chairman Bill Ford in a difficult position.
He has called the Lightning launch the most important in his career at Ford, which stretches back for decades.
This launch will go down in Ford’s history as one of its least successful.
“You Americans are so gullible.”
“No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.”
“We won’t have to fight you.”
“We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within.”
– Soviet Union Premier Nikita Khrushchev
************************
Reuters
“Biden to require chips companies winning subsidies to share excess profits”
By David Shepardson
February 28, 2023
WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (Reuters) – The Biden administration on Tuesday said it will require companies winning funds from its $52-billion U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and research program to share excess profits and explain how they plan to provide affordable childcare.
Recipients who receive more than $150 million in direct funding “will be required to share with the U.S. government a portion of any cash flows or returns that exceed the applicant’s projections by an agreed-upon threshold,” the department said.
It’s not uncommon for states to require specific employment targets as a condition for tax subsidies, but the Biden administration is a significant expansion.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said companies must submit a plan that includes an outline of workforce needs.
Applicants seeking more than $150 million in direct funding must submit “a plan for how they will provide affordable and accessible childcare for their workers.”
Applicants should also “create opportunities for minority owned, veteran-owned, and women-owned businesses; demonstrate climate and environmental responsibility; invest in their communities by addressing barriers to economic inclusion; and commit to using iron, steel, and construction materials produced in the United States.”
Joe Biden @JoeBiden
United States government official
For decades, climate deniers blocked any meaningful progress in dealing with the climate crisis, but not this year.
Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, we’re taking the most aggressive action to confront the climate crisis ever.
11:20 AM · Sep 1, 2022
*******************************
Reuters
“Stellantis seeks ‘solution’ for shuttered Illinois Jeep plant, CEO says”
Reuters
February 28, 2023
DETROIT, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Stellantis NV Chief Executive Carlos Tavares said the automaker is “looking for a solution” for an Illinois assembly plant scheduled to stop producing Jeep SUVs on Tuesday, but the high costs of producing electric vehicles there may make it hard to keep the plant open.
“We need to find a solution for the fact that the technology that has been decided is 40% more expensive” than combustion vehicles, Tavares told reporters during a videoconference.
Tavares warned again Tuesday that the shift to electric vehicles pushed by regulators in the United States and Europe could shrink the auto industry.
On a separate issue, Tavares said Stellantis has secured raw materials it needs for electric vehicles through 2027, and could make additional investments in mining companies to lock in supplies.
Tavares said battery technology “has not stabilized.”
Raw materials needed for today’s batteries could change as battery technology changes, he said.
An advantage we here in the Cape Charles Mirror have is continuity of thought, in that what starts a thread like this one can and likely will have ramifications and repercussions far into the future, as is the case here as this matter continues to unfold, so that we can come back to a thread and update it, staying with the original topic, in this case the Biden CHIPS ACT, so a new reader can tie it all together without having to do a lot of searching, since all the information needed is all in one place.
So, by way of review, let’s go back to August 25, 2022, and the White House FACT SHEET: President Biden Signs Executive Order to Implement the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, where we have the following BIDEN PROPAGANDA, to wit:
Today, President Biden signed an Executive Order to implement the semiconductor funding in the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.
This legislation will lower the costs of goods, create high paying manufacturing jobs around the country, and ensure we make more critical technologies at home.
This law builds on more than a year of work from the Biden-Harris Administration to respond to acute semiconductor shortages and build more resilient semiconductor supply chains.
The historic funding and incentives in the CHIPS Act will help rebuild our supply chains, manufacturing, and infrastructure here at home, along with crucial invests from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.
This Executive Order reflects the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to quickly increase production of semiconductors, strengthen research and design leadership, and grow a diverse semiconductor workforce to give the country a competitive edge on the world stage.
end quotes
Now, as we will see, and have been seeing in prior posts, that is all BIDEN HORSE****, and before we go further, make a note of this above, to wit: “along with crucial invests from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.”
As we see in a companion thread titled “Op-Ed: The Insanity of the Inflation Reduction Act” http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/op-ed-the-insanity-of-the-inflation-reduction-act/#comment-775895 , however, the BIDEN IRA is itself a DRIVER of INFLATION, as is the BIDEN INFRASTRUCTURE LAW and the BIDEN CHIPS ACT, to wit:
Reuters
“Exclusive: Samsung’s new Texas chip plant cost rises above $25 billion – sources”
By Alexandra Alper and Stephen Nellis
March 15, 2023
WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO, March 15 (Reuters) – A chip plant that South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is building in Taylor, Texas, will cost the world’s biggest memory chipmaker over $25 billion, up more than $8 billion from initial forecasts, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The increase in cost is primarily due to inflation, the people said, declining to be named because the information was not public.
“The higher construction cost is about 80% of the cost increase,” one of the sources said.
“The materials have gotten more expensive,” the source added.
end quotes
And, people, that was a given right from the start, and it takes nothing more than about a tenth-grade education and some common sense to understand that equation!
Going back to the story, we have more as follows, to wit:
Chipmakers are applying for billions in grants from the Biden administration thanks to the CHIPS Act, aimed at ramping up chip production in the United States.
But increasing costs raise questions about how far those dollars will go.
The bill was proposed in 2020, before a historic run-up in inflation that U.S. officials are still working to tame.
U.S. Commerce Department officials said early this month that most government grants will only cover up to 15% of the cost of new plants.
Meanwhile, in the three years since lawmakers first floated the $52 billion figure for CHIPS Act grants, of which only $39 billion is now earmarked for direct investment in plant construction, the cost of labor has risen sharply, along with the price of construction materials like steel.
That could push up the cost of what are already huge spending plans.
end quotes
And there for the moment I will rest, before coming back to that same story for more of the INSANITY Joe Biden has unleashed here, so stay tuned.
Fox News
“Whatever happened to the global chip shortage?”
Story by Bret Baier, Amy Munneke
28 March 2023
President Biden has been traveling across the country to meet with state leaders in an effort to ramp up semiconductor production across the United States.
“America is coming back.”
“We’re determined to lead the world in the manufacturing of semiconductors,” President Biden said Tuesday.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo spoke about the CHIPS for America Program on “Special Report” this past February.
Semiconductor companies have been able to apply for those incentives through the initiative.
“Congress has sent $52 billion to us here at the Commerce Department and it’s our job to invest that, working with companies to make chips in America,” Raimondo said.
“Every governor out there thinks the next chip factory will be in their state.”
“They will compete.”
“I’m sure they’ll put incentives on the table and that’s what they should do.”
Many companies began breaking ground on new facilities and expansions before the CHIPS Act was officially signed, including New York-based GlobalFoundries.
“We need the right economics to continue to add capacity in the U.S.,” GlobalFoundries CEO Thomas Caulfield said.
“The chips will be an integral part of the economics to close the funding gap, to create that capacity that can compete globally against all the players in manufacturing.”
Since the end of 2022, at least 23 new chip fabs have been announced and nine will increase production, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.
Caulfield agreed and said U.S. manufacturing for products requiring chips needed to keep up with U.S. semiconductor production.
“Probably the biggest issue we still need to contend with is to make sure the demand for all this capacity we want in the U.S. materializes,” Caulfield said.
“The last thing we want to do is in industry, create capacity in the U.S. and have it go underutilized.”
Reuters
“Samsung to cut chip output to ride out downturn; shares rally”
By Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yang
April 7, 2023
SEOUL, April 7 (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Friday it would make a “meaningful” cut to chip production, following the lead of smaller rivals, as it grapples with a sharp global downturn in semiconductor demand that has sent prices plummeting.
The unusual output cut by the world’s biggest memory chipmaker – with no previous announcement recalled by Samsung officials and analysts – came after it flagged a worse-than-expected 96% plunge in first-quarter profit.
Samsung said memory demand had dropped sharply because of a weak global economy and customers slowing purchases as they focused on using up their stocks.
“We are lowering the production of memory chips by a meaningful level, especially that of products with supply secured,” it added, in a reference to those with sufficient inventories.
Samsung did not disclose the size of the planned production cut, but it sent a strong signal for a company that had previously said it would make small adjustments like pauses for refurbishing production lines but not a full-blown cut.
SK Hynix said in October it would more than halve its capital spending in 2023 versus 2022, while Micron cut fiscal 2023 investment plans by more than 30% in September.
“Samsung talking about production cuts is evidence of how bad the current slump really is,” said Greg Roh, head of research at Hyundai Motor Securities.
The inflation caused by Joe Biden’s INSANE GREEN DREAM and his other dream of making America into the global supplier of chips on borrowed money is harming the very markets Joe thought he could make stronger:
Reuters
“Global PC shipments slide in first quarter, Apple takes biggest hit, IDC says”
April 10, 2023
April 10 (Reuters) – Global shipments of personal computers slumped by nearly a third in the first quarter of 2023, with Apple Inc dropping the most among the market heavyweights as the industry struggles with a post-pandemic slowdown in consumer spending.
In separate reports published on Monday, market research firms IDC and Canalys blamed weak demand, excess inventory and a bleak economic outlook for the shipment declines of 29% and 33%, respectively.
“Most of the issues that plagued the industry in the second half of last year have extended into the start of 2023,” Canalys analyst Ishan Dutt said.
Of the top five PC makers analysed in the reports, Apple saw the largest drop with a fall of more than 40%.
That was followed by Dell Technologies Inc with a drop of around 31%.
Lenovo Group Ltd, Asustek Computer Inc and HP Inc also faced declines, the reports said.
The data suggests that PC makers are set for another quarter of weak earnings after a 2022 that saw their sales squeezed by the end of the pandemic-driven demand boom.
The pause in demand and growth, however, is giving supply chains time to stabilize after a rocky two years and for companies to explore production options outside China, IDC said.
But some analysts are less optimistic, considering the crisis in the banking sector and signs that the Federal Reserve will continue on its rate-hiking path to arrest still-high inflation.
“The evidence doesn’t seem to support the idea that (the recovery) is going to happen,” said Fox Advisors analyst Steven Fox, pointing to the widespread cost cuts across companies.
“We’re not looking at a crash in demand from here.”
“We’re saying things are sluggish and are going to stay that way.”
And here we are coming back, as was inevitable, given that reality governs reality, not Joe Biden, although the fool thinks he does, to the original post on August 7, 2022, where I raised this important reality-based question with some follow-on commentary, to wit:
I. HOW MUCH WATER DOES A CHIP FAB REQUIRE ON A DAILY BASIS?
So how much water does it take to operate a chip fab then, when Joe starts building them here?
By some estimates, a large chip fab can use up to 10 million gallons of water a day, which is equivalent to the water consumption of roughly 300,000 households and that is because each chip needs to be rinsed with ultrapure water (UPW) — water so pure that is considered an industrial solvent — to remove debris (ions, particles, silica, etc.) from the manufacturing process and prevent the chips from becoming contaminated.
So where, then, is Joe Biden going to get all that water from?
Or doesn’t he have a clue?
Stay tuned as we explore this matter further, because the future Joe is going to impact is that of ourselves, our children and grandchildren and on down the line.
end quotes
And here we are today, keeping in mind that Joe Biden is pouring taxpayer dollars into some huge CHIP-FABS in Arizona, America’s second driest state after Nevada, something you think the president of the United States would be at least peripherally aware of, given it is known by the time children are in fifth grade, if not earlier, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s massive factory sitting on more than 1,000 acres in north Phoenix just west of Interstate 17, and Intel planning to build two new leading-edge chip factories at its Ocotillo campus in Chandler, Ariz., to wit:
Newsweek
“Biden’s Colorado River Proposal Will Cut Water to Three States”
Story by Anna Skinner
11 April 2023
The Biden Administration is taking action to preserve the dwindling water in the Colorado River, a proposal from the United States Department of Interior (DOI) revealed on Tuesday.
end quote
And what a ridiculous statement that is in light of Joe Biden making Arizona a hub for water-hog CHIP FABS – as if committing to more water usage for the CHIP FABS will somehow work to preserve the dwindling water in the Colorado River, which takes us back to Newsweek, to wit:
Stressed by population growth, overuse and parched by a years-long drought that has plagued the region, the Colorado River is suffering.
end quote
And with Joe Biden’s INSANE DREAM of making the US the global chip source, it is going to suffer even more, which again takes us back to the unfolding story, to wit:
States in the lower Colorado basin have been negotiating for months to draft a plan that would preserve the valuable resource while continuing to provide water service to millions of residents and fuel the nation’s agricultural industry.
Required water cuts have already been implemented and increased in severity this year for Arizona and Nevada.
Western states are scrambling to come up with a solution that preserves their access to Colorado River water while uniting the region on a path to recovery for the drought-stricken river and its associated reservoirs.
At the beginning of the year, six of the states in the Colorado River basin united with a proposed plan for water conservation.
The plan would force California to bear some of the cuts.
A day later, California came out with its own plan, which would put the brunt of the cuts on Arizona and preserve California’s allocation because of the state’s senior water rights.
Rather than wait and allow the states to continue struggling with a solution, the Biden Administration is taking control of the matter.
end quotes
Which means we can expect things to be all ****** up BIG TIME, which is Joe’s legacy so far – put his ham-hands of something and leave it the worse for it, because Joe is incompetent, which takes us back to newsweek, to wit:
On Tuesday, the DOI released a proposal consisting of three options.
1. Equal Cuts
One of the solutions proposes equal cuts for three states in the lower Colorado River basin: California, Arizona and Nevada.
2. Seniority
Other options proposed by the DOI respect seniority and propose the strictest cuts on Arizona and Nevada.
The situation could turn dire for areas like Phoenix and Tucson, which have already borne the brunt of water allocation cuts.
3. Nothing
A third option proposed by the DOI was to do nothing.
end quotes
And my goodness, but didn’t we just read that TSMC was building a massive CHIP FAB outside that same city of Phoenix?
So where is Joe going to get all the extra water from, then?
And the answer is that fool does not have a clue!
Going back to the beginning of this thread on Joe Biden’s CHIP Act, which I called “Joe Biden’s Ultra-MAGA Great Leap Forward,” although that title would not have truly captured the essence of the madness afoot here as contained in Joe Biden’s First Five Year Plan, so I condensed it down to its essence, which is insanity and madness in a time of Joe Biden, referring to the “Statement from President Biden on House Passage of CHIPS and Science Act to Lower Costs, Create Good-Pay Jobs and Strengthen Our National Security,” on July 28, 2022, wherein Joe Biden told the nation and the world, and us, as follows in typical shallow-thinking Joe Biden fashion as follows:
“Today, the House passed a bill that will make cars cheaper, appliances cheaper, and computers cheaper.”
“It will lower the costs of everyday goods.”
“And, it will create high-paying manufacturing jobs across the country and strengthen U.S. leadership in the industries of the future at the same time.”
end quotes
That was all said on August 7, 2022.
And subsequent thereto, we talked about all of Joe’s tax breaks and incentives for the CHIP industry that Joe hoped to build to make America THE LEADER in chip production in the world, and from there, we talked about the GLUT of chips already in existence, so let’s come forward to today and a Reuters article titled “TI forecasts downbeat second quarter on growing demand weakness” by Chavi Mehta on April 25, 2023, where we have the latest on Joe’s plans regarding the chip industry, to wit:
April 25 (Reuters) – Texas Instruments forecast second-quarter revenue and profit below Wall Street estimates on Tuesday, signaling demand weakness is spreading to most of the analog chipmaker’s end-markets.
end quote
Yes, people, demand weakness, which takes us back for more, to wit:
A chip supply glut, which started from the consumer electronics market, has seeped into broader markets like enterprise and industrial as rising interest rates saps spending across the board.
end quotes
Interest rates are rising, of course, because of the HUGE amount of money Joe has been pouring into the economy, causing the inflation the federal reserve is trying to fight with rising interest rates, which are harming what Joe is trying to create, very mindlessly, of course, him being shallow-thinking and short-sighted Joe Biden which takes us back to Reuters, to wit:
The company’s revenue in both the personal electronics segment and the division that caters to data center servers fell 30% in the first quarter from the fourth quarter.
Industrial market revenue was flat.
For TI, which said overstocked customers were still purging excess inventory, this marks trouble as it derives about 70% of its revenue from these markets, with industrial comprising about 40%.
The glut has also hurt chip prices in the market, pressuring profit margins of chipmakers like Texas Instruments.
Still automotive was a bright spot in the first quarter, with revenue up mid-single digits, the company said.
But Summit Insights Group analyst Kinngai Chan warned industry checks already indicated a weakening order in the automotive market.
end quotes
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we, the American people are suffering from the inflation caused by Joe’s reckless spending on his INSANE DREAMS and we are facing a recession ahead, which gives us all something to contemplate as the future looms large in our lives, so if you want more insanity to come, Joe just announced he is running for president again, and he is your man to fulfill that wish!
And while we are on the subject of demand weakness for chips as a result of a glut, this as Joe Biden continues to plow more and more borrowed money we are on the hook for into building even more chip fabs, we have from Reuters on that subject, as follows:
“AMD shares sink on forecast miss with chip market weak”
By Chavi Mehta and Jane Lee
May 2, 2023
May 2 (Reuters) – Shares of Advanced Micro Devices fell on Tuesday after a second-quarter forecast missed Wall Street expectations, overshadowing optimism from company executives that the battered chip market will start to recover in the second half of 2023.
AMD shares fell 7% in extended trading after the company announced first-quarter sales that missed analyst estimates for PC and data center chips, its two largest segments.
But in the meantime, the company is still grappling with a depressed PC market.
Dean McCarron, head of chip market tracking firm Mercury Research, said both AMD and Intel are selling fewer chips to PC makers, hoping those customers will burn off a glut of chips on their shelves.
Revenue from AMD’s client segment, which includes personal computers, fell 65% to $739 million in the first quarter.
Data center segment revenue was flat at $1.30 billion during the quarter.