According to the CEOs of Infineon, STMicroelectronics and NXP their businesses have been suffering from uncertainty and the trend toward nationalist industrial policies seen over the past decade. That’s likely to be made worse by the recent election of Donald Trump and his proposed policy of imposing swingeing tariffs on imported goods.
"The danger is that we will accelerate in this fragmentation," said Infineon CEO Jochen Hanebeck. He went on to warn that, “fragmentation is happening on the supply side, and potentially with tariffs, which are written on the wall, it will get worse.”
All three companies are major suppliers of chips to industry and have benefitted from the strong demand coming from China, where the boom in electric vehicle sales has boosted demand.
China has provided a significant boost for these companies at a time when many chip markets around the world are weak, unless you are engaged in artificial intelligence.
STMicroelectronics CEO Jean-Marc Chery warned that recreating supply and production chains on separate continents to make "China for China and West for West" chips had been costly.
He said had been the case in terms of both material and engineering.
NXP Semiconductors CEO Kurt Sievers said no country will be able to dominate the chip industry or be independent of the rest of the world.
"If it was possible,” he warned, then, “it would become so expensive that no consumer could afford any device which uses chips.”
