U.S.-China Trade War Portends Painful Times for U.S. Semiconductor Industry

Source: IEEE Spectrum

Semiconductor industry mavens in the United States anticipate damage from U.S.-China trade policy and call for a national strategy for semiconductor manufacturing

 By Tekla S. Perry | June 5, 2019

"There is going to be a lot of pain for the semiconductor industry before it normalizes," says Dan Hutcheson.

“It’s a mess, and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better," says David French.

"If we aren't going to sell them chips, it is not going to take them long [to catch up to us]; it is going to hurt us," says Mar Hershenson.

French, Hutcheson, and Hershenson, along with Ann Kim and Pete Rodriguez, were discussing the U.S.-China trade war that escalated last month when the United States placed communications behemoth Huawei on a trade blacklist. All five are semiconductor industry veterans and investors: French is currently chairman of Silicon Power Technology; Hutcheson is CEO of VLSI Research; Hershenson is managing partner of Pear Ventures, Kim is managing director of Silicon Valley Bank's Frontier Technology Group, and Rodriguez is CEO of startup incubator Silicon Catalyst. The five took the stage at Silicon Catalyst's second industry forum, held in Santa Clara, Calif., last week to discuss several aspects of the trade war:

• Effects on China
• IP theft
• Immigration policy
• A call for a national strategy
• Missing investment dollars

Effects on China

Tight trade policies, these semiconductor industry veterans expect, will hurt the U.S. industry more than China. "The consumption of semiconductors in China is 40 to 50 percent" of the world supply, said French. "And that number is going to go up whether we sell to them or not."

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