I’m sure TSMC would become untenable if either the US stopped buying or selling to them, though I tend to disagree and think that not licensing US tech would kill them faster. I’m pretty sure that much of that tech is not available from anywhere else and would just cause a full stop of their business, at least for some time. It’s easier to survive on lower revenue than it is on a fully shuttered assembly line.

There is likely a lot of US tech in that chip. TSMC is just a fab, they don’t have a lot of their own technology, they buy thousands of pieces of tech from all over the world to make their chips. A lot of that comes from the US.

If they are using GPL code, shouldn’t they also release their source code?

See my post above in the thread where I show the laws I am talking about and cite source.

See my post above with citation.

This article summarizes the subsidies I’m talking about. Here’s an excerpt:

For now, the important point is that trucks generally are more profitable than cars thanks to two big government incentives, both of them historical footnotes.

The first is the so-called chicken tax, a 25 percent tariff imposed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 on foreign-built work vehicles as part of a chicken-related trade war with Europe. If you’re making a pickup or cargo van in the United States, profits should be higher, because foreign factories can’t come close to undercutting you on price.

The second incentive lies in the fine print of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards adopted in 1975, Gerald Ford’s reluctant response to a crippling Middle East oil embargo that sent gas prices soaring. To protect American commerce, work trucks and light trucks were subject to less-strict CAFE standards than family sedans. Trucks are also exempt from the 1978 gas guzzler tax, which adds $1,000 to $7,700 to the price of sedans that get 22.5 or fewer miles to the gallon.

That’s because the USA subsidizes bigger trucks as “work vehicles”. This practice needs to stop and they need to be taxed more than smaller vehicles.

Until governments get serious about trust busting, it will keep happening. Companies that don’t have to compete enshittify.