Trump’s war is the most dangerous double-edged gamble I can remember

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If Donald Trump’s war against Iran is really about the containment of China, it is surely the most dangerous double-edged gamble in living memory.

The surge in oil, gas, aluminium and fertiliser prices have bailed out Vladimir Putin just as he faces the worst funding crisis since the invasion of Ukraine.

Trump talks airily about a naval convoy to protect global shipping and reopen the Strait of Hormuz but no such operation is close to existing. It violates a US law that forbids naval escort of foreign-flagged ships. Lloyds List reports that shipowners and insurers do not think it plausible.

US intelligence officials say China’s Xi Jinping has told the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be ready for an invasion of Taiwan by 2027.

China’s latest plan to dominate global trade

Stephen BartholomeuszSenior business columnist

Senior business columnist

That was before America blew through so much of its military arsenal in the Middle East. Trump exhausted a quarter of the Pentagon’s entire arsenal of THAAD missiles in a matter of days bombing Iran’s nuclear site last June.

Yun Sun, China director at the Stimson Centre, sees a high risk that Xi will move this year to take control over Taiwan – and with it 90 per cent of the world’s industry for advanced semiconductors – calculating that there will never again be such a chance.

“There is a window of opportunity,” she said.

Nvidia may be the global leader in AI computing but it does not make its own chips. It is a “fabless” design company that outsources the manufacturing to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) at foundries on silicon island.

TSMC began to produce Nvidia’s top-tier Blackwell chips – denied to China under US trade controls – at a new foundry in Arizona in October but they are still sent to Taiwan for the final stage of complex “packaging”.

Amkor Technology aims to start packaging........

© The Sydney Morning Herald