The industry evolves at incredible speed, Chang continued. Even if the United States managed to build some high-quality factories with the spending Pelosi championed, it would have to keep investing more and more to keep those facilities up to date. Otherwise, he said, Americans would in short order find themselves with tens of billions of dollars’... See more

Over lunch, Chang warned that it was terribly naïve of the United States to think that it could rapidly spend its way into one of the most complex electronics-manufacturing markets in the world. The task of making semiconductor chips was almost impossibly complicated, he said, demanding Herculean labors merely to obtain the raw materials involved... See more

Other Taiwanese executives present voiced hesitation, Pelosi acknowledged, with some questioning whether American environmental and labor laws were consistent with the goal of nurturing a sophisticated industry. In our conversation, she rejected the idea that there might be tensions between her political party’s grand economic and social... See more