Jonas Nahm

1/ Dan Wang’s NYT essay on TSMC's Arizona plant argues that TSMC is doing for America what Apple did for China. But the analogy rests on two assumptions and it's not clear that either one of them is holding. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/o...

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10/ Allied industrial investment depends on engineers being able to enter and stay. Enforcement volatility and unpredictability can undo a project much faster than subsidies can attract a new one.

11/ One quibble: the essay doubts Germany or France could land TSMC and integrate Asian families. ESMC Dresden — TSMC with Bosch, Infineon and NXP — broke ground in 2024. Mature nodes and far smaller, but the JV puts three European chipmakers a position to learn from TSMC.

8/ Of course none of this means Arizona fails. But presence alone doesn’t guarantee learning. A fab can run well for years without the skill behind it reaching anyone who doesn’t work inside it, or spilling out into the broader economy.

9/ The piece to emphasize is on immigration. ICE detained hundreds of Korean workers at the Hyundai-LG plant in Georgia, many with valid visas. Over 300 left under negotiated “voluntary departure.”

6/ The absorption piece is also not fully settled. Diffusion in China worked because engineers left for domestic rivals. In American, the domestic rival is Intel, and the Intel Foundry may not be in shape to absorb much.

7/ Rotation makes both difficult. Engineers come on contracts of up to three years, the first cohort is already heading home. The question is whether some of what they know stays behind when they leave.

4/ The second assumption is about labor mobility. Spillover in China happened because engineers left and founded or joined competitors. That’s basically the Shenzhen story.

5/ But, TSMC keeps R&D concentrated in Taiwan, and Taipei codified an “N-1” rule barring export of the leading-edge node. Arizona is a generation behind Hsinchu as a matter of law.

2/ The first assumption is about supplier spillover. Apple’s impact on the Chinese economy ran through thousands of domestic component, tooling and assembly firms pulled up to Apple's standard — Foxconn first, then a whole ecosystem.

3/ TSMC Arizona’s equipment comes from ASML, Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron. Those vendors basically supply every advanced fab on earth. But what actually gets localized around Phoenix, and over what timeline, is still open.

nytimes.comGeorge W. Bush and Cornyn Leave Out Paxton as They Raise Cash for Senate CandidatesThe former president and Texas senator are headlining a fund-raiser in Dallas for top Republican Senate candidates. Not included: Ken Paxton, the nominee in their own state.

22 Sept

Bush and Cornyn are picking which trees to save while helping torch the forest — funding the Republicans they respect still means funding a Senate majority run by the ones they don't. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/21/u...

washingtonpost.comOpinion | I ran a German newspaper. Here’s what I got wrong about East Germans.German liberals learned to take everyone’s identity seriously — except that of East Germans.

22 Sept

I learned something from this: www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

1/ Von der Leyen just offered Canada "associate membership" in the EU in her State of the Union address. Carney was in the chamber. Standing ovation. Perhaps the clearest sign yet that some countries are actively trying to build a new architecture for global trade.

9/ But the attempt itself is important. Countries that lack the size to set terms unilaterally are looking for frameworks that bind everyone equally, including the powerful. Whether they succeed is uncertain, but they are trying, and finding each other.

10/ Rules-based trade — economic relationships governed by stable, predictable frameworks rather than the preferences of the powerful — has become more attractive, not less, in a world of tariff volatility. Countries are not abandoning that idea, but are fighting to preserve it.

7/ Canada is one node in something larger. The EU concluded agreements with Mercosur, India, Australia, and Indonesia in the past year. Each was struck for reasons specific to that relationship.

8/ The obstacles are significant. Canada sends 70% of exports to the US and trades $850 billion with America versus $150 billion with Europe. Regulatory alignment with the EU means diverging from US standards embedded in USMCA.

5/ What the EU offers that makes this possible are terms that hold, agreements that survive elections, a framework whose rules don't change with the political weather. That's what Canada is trying to buy into.

6/ The "associate membership" category von der Leyen proposed doesn't exist in EU law. As Brussels is beginning to recognize its own gravitational pull, it's acting on it faster than its own institutions can absorb.

3/ Canada isn't joining the EU. It isn't pivoting to China. It's building optionality — deeper EU ties on energy, critical minerals, defense, and potentially visa-free movement, while pursuing new deals in Asia. That's less of a bloc and more an attempt at a network.

4/ Von der Leyen was explicit about the logic: "not against anyone else, but for our common strength." The network being attempted is organized around shared principles rather than against any particular power.

2/ The conventional assumption has been that the fracturing of the US-led order would produce a choice between two blocs — one around Washington, one around Beijing. What's happening between Canada and the EU suggests a deliberate effort to build a third option.

nytimes.comE.U. Offers to Make Canada ‘Associate Member’ as U.S. Ties Weaken for BothCanada and the European Union have been confronting an increasingly challenging relationship with the United States under President Trump.

28th state rebuke to the 51st state talk coming from the Trump admin. Lots of practical hurdles and questions about scope of EU partnership, but a clear signal in favor of stability and predictability. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/w...

Jonas Nahm@jonasnahm.com

1/ New piece in Foreign Affairs on why EU bureaucracy — long a favorite punchline — turns out to be a hidden source of power. www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/europ...

foreignaffairs.comEurope’s Hidden Trade AdvantageSlow and steady wins the negotiation.

wsj.comExclusive | Mark Carney’s Audacious Bid to Make Canada an ‘Associate Member’ of the EUAs trade talks with the U.S. collapse, prime minister pursues a major—and risky—pivot to Europe; an Ottawa book club plays its part.

The week my @foreignaffairs.com piece on Europe's hidden trade advantage published, the WSJ reports Canada is exploring a "unique alliance" with the EU — after walking away from US trade talks in August. The argument, unfolding in real time. www.wsj.com/world/europe...

Jonas Nahm@jonasnahm.com

1/ New piece in Foreign Affairs on why EU bureaucracy — long a favorite punchline — turns out to be a hidden source of power. www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/europ...

foreignaffairs.comEurope’s Hidden Trade AdvantageSlow and steady wins the negotiation.

foreignaffairs.comEurope’s Hidden Trade AdvantageSlow and steady wins the negotiation.

1/ New piece in Foreign Affairs on why EU bureaucracy — long a favorite punchline — turns out to be a hidden source of power. www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/europ...

14/ Washington is not excluded from this. But a future US administration that chose to engage would be doing so on terms it did not write. That is not a position Washington is accustomed to.

15/ Countries watching the current moment might conclude that executive agility and the willingness to weaponize economic relationships are the currencies of power. The EU's experience suggests otherwise.

foreignaffairs.comEurope’s Hidden Trade AdvantageSlow and steady wins the negotiation.

1/ New piece in Foreign Affairs on why EU bureaucracy — long a favorite punchline — turns out to be a hidden source of power. www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/europ...

12/ The UK, meanwhile, tried a different approach. The OBR estimates Brexit reduced trade with Europe by 15% and made the economy 4% less productive — roughly $135 billion a year. The promised US free trade deal never arrived.

13/ What the EU is now assembling, one agreement at a time, is not a preservation of the old order but something new, a coalition of economies that have chosen rules over leverage as the organizing principle of their economic relationships.

foreignaffairs.comEurope’s Hidden Trade AdvantageSlow and steady wins the negotiation.

1/ New piece in Foreign Affairs on why EU bureaucracy — long a favorite punchline — turns out to be a hidden source of power. www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/europ...

10/ The constraints that frustrate European governments when they want to act quickly are the same constraints that make European commitments durable.

11/ In the EU, trade agreements require Commission negotiation, qualified majority approval, and Parliament's consent. New tariffs require a formal investigation with statutory deadlines. There is no EU equivalent of Section 301 or Section 232.

foreignaffairs.comEurope’s Hidden Trade AdvantageSlow and steady wins the negotiation.

1/ New piece in Foreign Affairs on why EU bureaucracy — long a favorite punchline — turns out to be a hidden source of power. www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/europ...

8/ The EU has long been mocked as too slow and too rule-bound. We all remember the jokes about the banana regulation.

9/ Those EU rules, though, were designed to make economic integration possible across a continent of vastly unequal economies. France and Germany couldn't simply override the Netherlands. That was the price the larger economies paid to bring the smaller ones in.

foreignaffairs.comEurope’s Hidden Trade AdvantageSlow and steady wins the negotiation.

1/ New piece in Foreign Affairs on why EU bureaucracy — long a favorite punchline — turns out to be a hidden source of power. www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/europ...

6/ Regardless of who wins in 2028, formal trade agreements with the United States no longer offer any certainty the terms will hold. Governments and investors must now permanently price in that risk.

7/ And where are countries looking instead? Europe. The EU concluded negotiations with India in January, Australia in March, Indonesia last September. Mercosur — 700 million people, the largest deal Brussels has ever signed — entered into force in May.

foreignaffairs.comEurope’s Hidden Trade AdvantageSlow and steady wins the negotiation.

1/ New piece in Foreign Affairs on why EU bureaucracy — long a favorite punchline — turns out to be a hidden source of power. www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/europ...

4/ Turns out it hasn't worked. The goods trade deficit hit a record $1.24 trillion in 2025. Manufacturing shed tens of thousands of jobs. Trade with China fell — but was diverted to Vietnam, Taiwan, and Mexico. The overall imbalance barely moved.

5/ Canada — the US's largest trading partner — walked away from negotiations in August. Mark Carney said the US approach had "called into question the reliability of any deal." That used to be our closest ally.

foreignaffairs.comEurope’s Hidden Trade AdvantageSlow and steady wins the negotiation.

1/ New piece in Foreign Affairs on why EU bureaucracy — long a favorite punchline — turns out to be a hidden source of power. www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/europ...

2/ In Europe, a joke is making the rounds. Trump spent the year searching for a 51st state — Greenland said no, Canada said no, Panama said no. Meanwhile Europe, accused of civilizational decline, can't keep up with the membership applications.