After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, elites of both parties in the U.S., overly confident in their conviction that Western openness had just defeated the Soviet Evil Empire, rushed to implement a Washington consensus of globalization and trade liberalization. It is perhaps only a matter of time before Xi Jinping finally pulls trigger and invades Taipei—and the most obvious reason the U.S. cares, and for which the U.S. would potentially risk a harrowing conflict against the only other global superpower, is due to American overreliance on the world’s leading chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Great Americans have understood this at least as far back as Alexander Hamilton’s 1791 “Report on Manufactures” in which he argued that free trade is often an illusion: “If the system of perfect liberty to industry and commerce were the prevailing system of nations, the arguments which dissuade a country in the predicament of the United States from the zealous pursuit of manufactures would doubtless have great force.
Author: Josh Hammer
Published at: 2025-04-06 22:00:00
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