US, China must restart talks to end trade war, ensuring global semiconductor supply chains remain intact

The United States and China will need to return to the negotiating table and seek an end to their trade war, which would help spur more advances to be made in the highly interdependent field of semiconductors.

“This is now a global industry, with everyone dependent on everyone else with these amazing, sophisticated supply chains,” said John Neuffer, president and chief executive of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), at the IC China conference in Shanghai on Tuesday. “It’s very clear that no one country – no one company – can do it all.”

His view echoed those of other senior industry executives at the conference amid concerns that a prolonged US-China trade dispute could seriously disrupt the sector’s complex, geographically widespread and intertwined value chain and ecosystem that has evolved over decades.

What has been “very troubling for our industry are the growing calls for decoupling the supply chain … [as if the industry] can somehow survive and thrive in a bipolar [global] economy”, said Neuffer, whose Washington-based trade group represents major semiconductor firms such as Intel Corp, Qualcomm, Micron Technology and Broadcom Corp.

Despite the trade tensions, the SIA’s Neuffer has called on governments around the world to resist decoupling supply chains and disentangling economic cooperation. “We need to get back to the table to negotiate a win-win outcome in trade negotiations between China and the US,” he said.