“This is a huge opportunity for us to break into the supply chain.”
Vietnam saw a 20% order bump at circuit board manufacturers the moment Trump threatened tariffs on China. Now they want to build a domestic fab by 2030, stand up 100 chip design companies, and launch a $72 million advanced packaging lab. The ambition is real but the article buries the cautionary tale. Malaysia has hosted foreign semiconductor facilities for over fifty years and still hasn’t produced a homegrown global chipmaker. Hosting someone else’s fab is not the same as owning the supply chain, and building your own costs north of $10 billion.