Rules and red tape was exactly my point. Why would TSMC choose to run that gauntlet willingly and potentially fall foul of the same hurdles that Tesla has encountered? One of the big problems Tesla had was around water supply. Do you have any idea how much water a chip fab uses?
My point around export restrictions was in reference to the EU blocking vaccine exports this year because it suited them. There would be heavy incentives for them to do the same for semiconductors in a future supply crisis like there is right now.
> One of the big problems Tesla had was around water supply.
Sure, but this was a completely predictable problem, and one that should have been assessed before they decided on a site. I would assume that TSMC would do the research before deciding on a site. It feels like another manifestation of Tesla's reluctance to ask outside experts, tbh.
Other chip manufacturers seem to manage in European countries which are fussy about water; notably, GlobalFoundries in Germany and Intel in Ireland both have large facilities.
> My point around export restrictions was in reference to the EU blocking vaccine exports this year because it suited them.
This should actually probably be viewed as a positive. There was a big fuss about the EU blocking, I believe, two or three shipments precisely because it had not previously blocked any; at the time this became an issue the EU and India were the only large producers with no controls on export of finished product (strictly speaking the UK didn't have controls in the conventional sense, but its contracts with its only manufacturer effectively didn't allow export). Both ultimately introduced controls, though in Europe's case they were very limited.
If you've had a Pfizer/Biontec vaccine and you live outside the US, it was almost certainly made in the EU unless you had it in the last month or so (the US has started allowing exports).
For all the fuss about that incident, Europe was _less_ inclined to control export than the other large economies.
The UK was just clever enough to hide the export ban in their contracts with AZ (unlike the US which did it more bluntly). The first xx million doses of vaccines manufactured in Oxford/Keele had to be supplied to the UK. Which is an export ban in all but name. But it gave the UK government the opportunity to claim that there was no export ban in place (even though nothing was exported for months).
ed- One thing is organising contracts in a certain way another thing entirely is setting in place an export ban - which, you may recall, is exactly what the EU DID threaten to do when the Dutch-run AZ plants failed to produce what they planned to do, despite the UK funding it to the tune of something like £54M to get production going, which the Dutch government outright refused to do.
Again, because this crops up a lot - I am in no way a flag-waving brexiteer - but i am thoroughly fed up with the shit-eating grinning from people with axes to grind. The UK has a lot to feel ashamed for over recent years, but this is not one of them.
>The UK was just clever enough to hide the export ban in their contracts with AZ (unlike the US which did it more bluntly). The first xx million doses of vaccines manufactured in Oxford/Keele had to be supplied to the UK. Which is an export ban in all but name.
I don't disagree that to country B waiting on doses, the outcome is the same whether or not the cause is country A implementing an export ban or country A having bought up all the doses by having signed the contract first. But there is a difference.
(The US never had an export ban, either. The US did the same thing as the UK; insist that they (which the US signed ahead of everyone else) would be fulfilled in the order they were signed.)
Vaccines aren't distributed to countries one after another until each order is completed. Instead, the production is divided up and goes towards different orders. What the UK did was to force AZ contractually to only supply the UK from Oxford/Keele for the first xx million doses (while happily importing the vast majority of vaccines from other countries who did not do such thing).
> (The US never had an export ban, either. The US did the same thing as the UK; insist that they (which the US signed ahead of everyone else) would be fulfilled in the order they were signed.)
That's not true. The US government used the Defense Production Act to stop the exports of finished vaccines until some time ago.
>Vaccines aren't distributed to countries one after another until each order is completed. Instead, the production is divided up and goes towards different orders
If I purchase an item before others, purchase by far the most quantities of that item, pay by far the most overall, and pay a considerable amount of money toward funding its development (shades of Kickstarter), I should expect that item before others.
By early June 2020 (<https://web.archive.org/web/20200603171013/https://www.nytim...>) the Trump administration had already identified and was planning to sign the aforementioned huge contracts with Moderna, AstraZeneca, J&J, Merck, and Pfizer. (An 80% success rate is fantastic in drug discovery.) By that time the US had already paid $2.2 billion to three of the companies. (Also note the skepticism throughout that any vaccines could be delivered anywhere within the timeframe the administration was promising.)
By contrast, look at Canada as counterexample. Consider Maclean's desperate attempt to spin its procurement difficulties (<https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/where-did-canadas-vaccin...>). If you look past the predictable eliding of the US's firstest-with-the-mostest contracts as an "export ban", the best the magazine can do is admit that
* all Canadian contracts with vaccine providers that actually delivered were signed between late July and late September
* all contracts were signed after the collapse of the CanSino deal, which Canada had loudly bragged about as proof of its savviness at obtaining vaccines ASAP and circumvent any US vaccine export ban (which, again, never happened), and which it has done its best since the collapse to pretend that the attempt to foil the perfidious Americans never ever existed
* the other contracts that the magazine cites as proof that CanSino wasn't the only basket Ottawa was putting all its eggs in are with VBI (Who?) and USask. They may or may not yet deliver effective vaccines, but it's all now a bit beside the point, eh?
>That's not true. The US government used the Defense Production Act to stop the exports of finished vaccines until some time ago.
The US's vaccine contracts would be fulfilled first regardless (albeit possibly more slowly) without the DPA, because (as I said) the US was the first and paid the most. The US's Pfizer contract explicitly prohibited the company from exporting US-produced vaccine doses until March 31, but that was a moot point because the company only began to export US-produced doses
at the end of April because it still had to fulfill said US contract first (<https://www.barrons.com/articles/pfizer-to-export-u-s-made-v...>)
"I wasn't going to settle for a contract that allowed the Oxford vaccine to be delivered to others around the world before us. I was insisting we could keep all of the British public safe as my primary responsibility as the Health Secretary."
I mean, if you're being _very_ pedantic, it's not an export ban. It's just a non-export ban measure which has exactly the same effect as an export ban. If you think that's a useful distinction, well, okay, I suppose, but for practical purposes it was an export ban.
lmao, how is that not an export ban in all but name. AZ literally wasn't allowed to export vaccines from Oxford/Keele until the quota set in the contracts was reached.
Rules and red tape was exactly my point. Why would TSMC choose to run that gauntlet willingly and potentially fall foul of the same hurdles that Tesla has encountered? One of the big problems Tesla had was around water supply. Do you have any idea how much water a chip fab uses?
My point around export restrictions was in reference to the EU blocking vaccine exports this year because it suited them. There would be heavy incentives for them to do the same for semiconductors in a future supply crisis like there is right now.