US Semiconductor Independence Comes a Little Late for EI

Rebuilding the US packaging industry would not only insulate chip companies and their customers from political risk, it could also help them break free of the long cycles involved in creating new chips, said Tony Levi, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Southern California.”

Reading that, I can’t help but think of Endicott Interconnect Technology and what might have been.

It must have been 15 years ago when I toured EI, the one-time IBM campus where bare board fabrication, assembly and chip packaging all took place. So self-contained was the operation, in fact, they had their own laminate treater.

EI was where the HyperBGA and CoreEZ high-speed flip-chip BGA packages were invented, as well as custom laminates for semiconductor packages. The engineering talent was second to none. They really could do it all.

What they never mastered, however, was the right scale. Agreements to license their products went nowhere. The layout complicated process flow: I remember having to duck to avoid banging my head as I would my way through the partially subterranean assembly facility. Dwindling revenues coupled with the high cost of doing business in New York ultimately scuttled the company, and the assets were sold to TTM in 2019.

With today’s emphasis from President Biden on down on rebuilding the US semiconductor industry, however, one can’t help but wonder whether EI was the right idea, just 20 years ahead of its time.

‘The Era of Offshoring US Jobs Is Over’ … or Is It?

That’s what the US Trade Representative says in an editorial in the New York Times today. And he gets the drivers right, mostly. But the results? “The United States lost five million manufacturing jobs. That, in turn, devastated towns and contributed to the breakdown of families, an opioid epidemic and despair.”

That’s just a crazy extrapolation. The US was at 3.1% unemployment prior to Covid-19.

Repeat after me: There. Were. More. Jobs. Than. Qualified. Workers.

For two decades, the no. 1 complaint I’ve heard from US business owners is the lack of manufacturing talent. Even in times of higher unemployment rates (the last two months notwithstanding), managers consistently noted the lack of basic communication and math skills among the workers available.

In his op-ed, USTR Robert Lighthizer adds, “If you want certainty, bring your plants back to America.”

It’s not that simple. You need the whole supply chain. And you need an end-market. The US, at 327 million people, isn’t big enough to sustain a company of any real size; those firms must be able to sell into other (larger) markets too.

And all those other big markets (China, Brazil, EU, etc.) have their own “make local” requirements and incentives.

I wish Lighthizer were right. But I’ll say it again: The US does not have enough worker talent to handle manufacturing at the cost necessary to satisfy the US market.

Trade Wars Battlefield Goes Beyond US-China

The US-China trade war shows no sign of abating. And as predicted, it is wreaking havoc on the electronics supply chain. While OEMs like Huawei get most of the headlines, suppliers of semiconductors are feeling the pain.

Even assemblers are getting caught in the crossfire: When the US government initiated a ban on doing business with Huawei, one of its EMS firms, Flex, withheld a reported $100 million in materials and shipments. According to some Chinese blogs, the OEM now plans to sever its business ties with Flex.

Less publicized, but perhaps just as crucial, is the ongoing spat between Japan and South Korea. The Asian nations are locked in a dispute over a group of uninhabited islands located in the straits between the two countries. Relationships are further frayed over issues of war reparations dating to World War II. Japan has struck first, taking steps to put controls on exports of key semiconductor fabrication materials to South Korea for fear they could be used in military applications. South Korea has not publicly countered, but the nation is home to two of the three largest memory device makers.

The tension between Japan and South Korea further complicates an already cloudy memory market picture. DRAM prices are already threatened by a global inventory glut, leading Gartner to forecast a 4% price drop this year. By choking materials supplies, Japan could inadvertently help lower inventories and boost margins. But there’s a point where parts availability could tip the wrong way, ratcheting up lead times and leaving buyers scrambling for sources.

By sales, Samsung and SK Hynix manufacture about 23% of the world’s memory chips. Their combined sales last year topped $110 billion. But there’s no simple answer. Japan is in many cases a sole source of many of these critical materials. How long will South Korea be willing to suffer? And what lengths will it go to to protect its semiconductor dominance?

Has the Economic Tide Turned?

2018 experienced a year of pump priming unlike any other during an economic growth period in our lifetimes. The US tax bill made significant revisions to the tax code, slashing taxes for (higher-income) individuals and corporations. The corporate rate alone was cut 14 percentage points, to 21%.

Moreover, taxes on profits held by US companies abroad were cut by 20 percentage points or more. That facilitated the repatriation of those cash reserves — estimated by Bank of America at $3.5 trillion, or more than 1/5th the size of the annual US GDP.

As those gains worked their way through the system, the effects included corporate buying sprees that topped anything we’d seen in at least a decade. Business capital investment budgets swelled, and suppliers’ bottom lines ballooned.

The bloom is off the rose, I’m afraid. While not a free fall, the economic reality today is that buyers are cooling off and budgets are returning to more conservative positions. Several EMS firms are guiding for slowing business conditions, and now fabricators are reporting the same. End-markets like automotive are leveling, which will have a ripple effect across the entire supply-chain.

No one likes a cynic, especially so close to the holiday season. But my advice is to go easy on the parties while aggressively going after market share. A large customer base is the best hedge against a slowing economy.

 

 

Don’t Sweat, Taiwan: Apple is Still Yours

Forbes today offers an interesting take on Apple, specifically, that Taiwan would feel the crunch of a major shift in the supply chain back to the US.

If Apple scales back contracts in Asia, at least a half-dozen core suppliers and assemblers in tech hardware hub Taiwan would face a loss in orders, analysts forecast. But those corporate heavyweights might be able to retain Apple’s business by moving their China-based production back home to Taiwan, if not to the U.S., and using automation for lower costs.

Let’s consider the various angles to this.

First, Forbes is right: A shift by Apple to somewhere outside China (it doesn’t have to be the US) would absolutely affect Taiwan’s major electronics ODMs. That precise outcome occurred when Cisco, AT&T, Motorola, Alcatel, Tellabs, Lucent and many, many others moved their manufacturing to suppliers outside North America. How much laminate is now manufacturing in the US? How much solder mask? Process equipment? Components? How many merchant fabricators and assemblers still do volume production in North America?

But let’s be straight here: Just who will be affected? Key Apple ODMs such as Pegatron, Compal, Wistron, Zhen Ding, and of course Foxconn would be directly impacted. They would have to spend tens of millions to rebuild elsewhere. But … they can afford it. Can anyone else?

Keep in mind, Taiwan doesn’t operate factories in China as a favor to the Chinese. It does so because it has to. Taiwan is a small nation with a population of less than that of New York City and roughly 16 to 17 million people of working age. The unemployment rate is 3.7%. It has no available domestic workers to hire into engineering and manufacturing. China has ample population resources, not to mention the stark differential in labor rates. (Taiwan’s national minimum wage is more than twice that of Shanghai’s, which is the highest in mainland China, and could be five times higher than that of China’s less developed areas. The fully burdened rates are equally disparate.) Taiwan has every incentive, financial or otherwise, to introduce more automation. If it could, it would. If Apple were to bail, China stands to lose much more than Taiwan.

Second, if not Taiwan, where would Apple go? The US doesn’t have the spare workers either. The unemployment rate is 3.9% and has been under the benchmark 6% rate for more than four years. Immigration is at a post-WW II low, further straining the labor pool. Wages are rising as businesses compete for a smaller available workforce.

Third, how long would it take? Building a supply chain in a new region takes time. Granted, the US has the processes in place to bring industrial parks online, but space in key areas is at a premium and local, state and federal regulations often impede quick progress. Many other nations have various issues (graft, corruption, lack of educated or trained workforce, lack of infrastructure, little or no IP controls, etc.) that also prevent a mass exodus. Businesses, especially public ones, cannot afford disruptions in getting products to market. They tend to be risk-averse, for good-reason.

Fourth, not all manufacturing plants are the same, a fact Forbes downplays.

Some Taiwan tech firms, most notably Foxconn, already operate factories in the US and could feasibly move final assembly of Apple’s gear to the US after some initial work at their cheaper China bases, says Tracy Tsai, research vice president with tech market analysis firm Gartner in Taipei.

If only it were that easy. An LCD panel plant is not the same as an SMT placement plant. It would be nearly as expensive to convert a plant as to greenfield one. And final assembly tends to be more labor intensive that upstream processes, which means higher costs. Putting that work in the higher (highest?) labor rate nation —  the average manufacturing labor rate in the US is now close to $39/hr. — makes little sense.

All in all, Forbes is waxing hypothetical, but it’s not a realistic notion.

Tariffs are Taxing the Supply Chain

The breaking tariff situation in the electronics industry is equal parts fascinating and chilling because of its lack of near-term precedence and unpredictability. We’ve spoken with several EMS companies (read the article here) to gauge the extent of the disarray and get a sense of how they are (attempting to) resolve the issue.

Our reporting is ongoing, so be sure to check back occasionally for updates.

 

 

In Trade War of Words, Huawei Goes on Offensive

“Huawei won’t move manufacturing to America.”

The headline sounds, well, weird, almost like “Tiffany’s not robbed.”

But the crux of it is a tale of global politics and business tactics growing ever-more-fascinating by the day.

In short, at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, the head of Huawei’s consumer business group issued a statement saying the smartphone maker doesn’t think much of the incoming Trump administration’s habit of calling out companies that build and import product to the US.

While Trump has thus far had mostly automakers in his sights (GM, Toyota, Ford), Apple has been the poster child for the war of words over trade. By speaking out at CES, the world’s largest technology trade show, Huawei is among the first companies, and likely the biggest, to go on the offensive.

“If [companies] move all manufacturing to the U.S., some manufacturing is not good for US companies, because costs will likely increase,” said Richard Yu, who was also a keynote at the show. “If you move all that [low-cost] manufacturing to the US, you’ll damage the US.”

Huawei has an uneasy history with the US. Its head is a former Chinese military officer Ren Zhengfei, and the company was banned from supplying telecom equipment to US government buyers after a Congressional committee accused the firm of spying on behalf of China. It is also the third-largest smartphone OEM in the world, and given the easy nature of using those devices as tools for capturing user habits and data, that is hardly less troubling.

More complex, Huawei, like Apple, depends heavily on Foxconn as a contract manufacturer. Although based in Taiwan, Foxconn founder and chairman Terry Gou is a strong supporter of China. He also is reportedly considering a run for president in his native Taiwan, a move that if successful would likely strengthen the ties between the island and mainland — and potentially further complicate already precarious relations between China and the US.

Until the new administration is officially installed in two weeks, the machinations are mostly bluster. But the chatter shows no signs of abating, and the campaigns for — and now, against — Made in America are just starting to heat up.

Don’t Expect Apple to Fall for US Again

Analysis of the impact of Apple moving its production — or at least some of it — to the US will continue over the next several months but with the imminent change in US administration it could be peaking now.

Back and forth continues among various media sites debating whether Apple can or can’t, and should or shouldn’t, relocate some of its assembly.

Forbes today points to multiple studies, one by Syracuse and another by MIT (from June) that estimate assembly costs for a high-end domestically produced iPhone would rise 5% ($30 to $40). Other estimates peg it at closer to 13% ($100).

To be sure, there will be more of these types of discussions taking place. But much of the chatter disregards that Apple can’t do this alone. We have argued previously that Apple’s mastery of the supply chain has as much to do with its success as the occasionally startling hipness of its designs. The cool factor is subsidizing; keep in mind Apple has only 12% share of the cellphone market, and the tablet market — in which it once commanded a 90% stake — is now absolutely flooded with competitors and shrinking by the year. Apple’s net income has been falling with it, and the Watch Series 2, its latest entrant in the smartwatch sector, is not only losing share, the entire category is diving.

Capacity would not only be a huge issue, but the costs of scaling up are not included in any of the financial analyses I’ve read. The very real costs of $1 million or more per high-volume line would be to be absorbed — and passed on. (Zhengzhou is said to be the largest Foxconn/Apple factory in the world, with 94 lines currently running.) That’s not including the costs of finding and/or greenfielding factories, hiring, training, and so on. By the time all that is done, a new administration could be in place.

And then there’s the issue of taxes, which most reports fail to assess or even discuss. A New York Times article today, however, quotes a former chief of staff of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation as saying: “US multinationals are the world leaders in tax avoidance strategies. In doing so, they create stateless income — income that has become unmoored from the countries to which it has an economic connection.”

Apple has stashed scores of billions of dollars offshore to avert a ginormous tax bill. The US corporate tax rate is third highest in the world on a top marginal basis, according to the Tax Foundation. This is a bit of a red herring — the lowest listed non-island nations are Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and no one is thinking of rushing there. But Ireland is among the lowest 20, a fact Apple has used to its advantage (although that could bite them, if the EU has its way).

All of this adds up to a very unlikely scenario that Apple will be motivated to relocate production. I could see a bit of highly publicized migration to what’s essentially a US showroom as a means to give politicians a “win” and displace some heat, but it would be trivial relative to the overall volume.

Update: Here’s yet another opinion, published on Dec. 29. And other, from the South China Post, asking whether China’s manufacturing is “hollowing out.”

Dec. 30 update: Foxconn’s CEO says will invest $8.8 billion in a new flat-panel display plant in China.

Patents, Home and Abroad

The annual review of the world’s patent filings always tells an interesting story.

Some 2.9 million applications were filed in 2015, up 7.8% year-over-year. China led with 1.01 million filings, followed by the US (526,000) and Japan (454,000), reports the World Intellectual Property Organization.

But … (when it comes to China there’s always a big but) … only 4% of China’s applications were outside their own borders, while 45% of US applications were filed abroad.

Computer technology (7.9% of the total) saw the highest percentage of published patent applications worldwide, followed by electrical machinery (7.3%) and digital communication (4.9%), WIPO reports.

WIPO doesn’t indicate why Chinese inventors are by and large choosing only to protect their claims in-country. Here are some possible reasons:

1. The US requires that inventors obtain a “foreign filing license” before filing foreign patent applications on inventions that occur in the US.  “This allows the government to assess, for example, whether the technology could threaten US national security,” says Dennis Crouch, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Law and co-director of the Center for Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship.

2. China, on the other hand, requires inventors to first file domestically, where it will then determine whether the invention needs to remain secret for security or other purposes. Only then is the inventor allowed to submit an application abroad.

In summary, domestic firewalls in the world’s two largest markets could well be hampering outsiders.

Made in the USA

This is a pet peeve, so forgive me in advance.

Manufacturing in the US is by no means dead.

We don’t have nearly the number of unskilled or semi-skilled manufacturing jobs as once before, thanks in part to hands-free automation and a higher level of engineering knowledge / skilled labor needed for the non-automated work. Overall employment in the sector dropped about 12% between 2003 and 2013, and more than 20% from 1993 to 2013.

We are no longer the global leader in either manufactured goods — a title lost in 2010 — or valued added manufacturing — which we ceded in 2013 — although the data are skewed of late in China’s favor because of currency valuation changes.

And here’s no question manufacturing as a percent of GDP has certainly slipped in the US (and not to our advantage, but that’s a different discussion).

But even given that, in terms of how much the US produces, we still produce north of $2 trillion worth of manufactured goods every year.

That’s a really big number.

Now, how to get some of that back in the US printed circuit industry?