Fear and resignation after ‘world’s most powerful company’ pays Trump a $158 billion ‘protection fee’

https://www.9news.com.au/world/fear-and-resignation-after-worlds-most-powerful-company-pays-us-president-donald-trump-protection-fee/8af5a931-26b7-497c-8af2-3cb23b3bfa0f

37 comments

  1. Pay all you want. I dont see trump delivering when needed.

    Guy has a long history of stiffing people out of contracts and money

  2. If I charge a Protection fee, I am considered an extortionist. Wtf

  3. Trump better protect Taiwan now that TMSC put up the money for “protection”.

  4. And Trump still lets China annex Taiwan, the company gets absorbed into the Chinese economy, Trump pockets a finders fee.

  5. The US government has gone from a tool for the people to trumps protection racket

  6. Agreeing to invest in a US plant – that they’re already building – is the same as paying a mafia extortion fee?

    Most likely they’re just talking about money they’d already planned to spend so Trump will think he’s won. Apple has done this as well.

  7. Anybody ever wonder what it would be like if a mobster was elected president?

    Well, we’re there now.

  8. Pretty good article laying everything out. I recommend actually reading the linked information as opposed to just the headline and top comments.

  11. “Taiwan, pretty soon just like [what] Trump said to Zelensky, ‘you have no cards to play,’ and Taiwan is not gonna have cards to play,” she said.

    “TSMC was the best card.”

  12. Donnie boy is a truffle pig and baby, it’s truffle season. He’s gonna sniff out every morsel of wealth and divvy it up amongst his cronads.

    For his next trick, he’ll plunder the National Parks for any resource he can find and I bet Elon will swoop in and suck it dry.

  13. Starting to have a suspicion things won’t work out well for America.

  14. Everyone in Taiwan better be wearing a suit when you’re saying thank you..

  15. ‘Ukraine today Taiwan tomorrow’ that shit is scary, and 15 years ago we would all think no fucking way. 2014 crimea, then Trump happened. The writing is on the wall if the world does not stop Russia. It just sets a precedence that we learned nothing from the world war, everyone got complacent. Just like that, the Nazi is back except they respawned on the world’s biggest Democracy enforcer.

  17. This is bad for Taiwan. And bad for the US as we are so obviously extorting them, and there’s no way Trump will protect them in return. So “protection fee” for nothing.

  18. Just get nuclear weapons and be done with it like everyone else.

  19. The TSMC that invested based on the CHIPS Act?

    Biden got them to invest. Trump just likes to claim credit, even while he threatens the investment by threatening to remove the CHIPS Act incentives to invest.

  20. I can’t fucking wait to piss on this orange cunts grave in 20 years

  21. I wouldn’t trust trump to give directions to cross the street let alone anything important.

    He’s proven time and again he’s a cheat, a liar, a welsher, and an all round bad egg

    So fulla shit it comes out his ears

  22. It’s quite the inverse. Trump’s only has value if he is perceived to be profitable to them. Trump is in a unique situation where he’s viewed as both a massive cash windfall and a massive financial risk. And to each company, he is one or the other. As much as people might think Trump’s life is at risk from the general public, it’s far more likely that his existence on this planet is more so a business decision, and when he upsets the wrong business, his lucky may change. Trump is influencing trillions of dollars of cash flow. He is influencing world commerce. Minor decisions to him will make or break entire companies. He is throwing lit matches around in a house of kindling. He’s simply influencing too much cash, and he’s doing it in a way that is chaotically harmful to a significant volume of industries.

    What’s worse is NOTHING buys you favor with Trump. He isn’t that kind of person. You can give him a trillion dollars today, and he’ll throw your entire existence under the bus tomorrow. That’s his nature. There is no value in these transactions besides maybe buying a small amount of time. Nothing guarantees tomorrow.

    The reality is we have a president, a vice president, and hundreds of appointed and elected personnel who are dismantling fundamental institutional infrastructure and upending world commerce and politics. None of this is good for business. Zero. Economics favor stability. This is effectively a world war level of chaos in scale. Nobody wins. Well, very, very, few do and 8 billion don’t.

  23. Some people want a king because they don’t want the responsibility of being a citizen.

  24. What other choice does Taiwan have, they are between a rock and a hard place.

  25. And they’ll get about as much protection as Ukraine for giving up WMDs

  27. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. China’s in the game now. All Trump had to do was rename the Chips Act to Trump Chips Act and continue American investments in American chip manufacturing and technical innovation and revitalize US semiconductor industry. Now Trump has has started a pissing contest with a skunk. The idiot man- child thinks he’s so smart.

  30. Please correct me if I’m wrong but…

    TSMC is not obligated or on the hook for the $100 billion. (Not sure why OP used Australian dollars in title) 
    The investment was already in motion due to the CHIPS act.  Trump just got them to inflate the number to $100B (was $65B) and then held a press conference saying he gets the credit. 

    It’s pretty telling that it’s a nice round number that got bigger without seemingly any changes to the plan.

    This looks like PR chaff from all parties, incl. the Taiwanese politicians quoted..

  31. The EU and ASML can put a stop to this quite easily and really hit back at US tariffs in a big way. Refuse to sell them the ASML extreme UV machines or put a 100% tariff on them unless they build their factories in the EU instead. Nobody can build cutting edge chips without those ASML machines.

  32. So, let me get this straight. US is already building infrastructure for this Semiconductor industry and is now paying this vast sum to release it from Taiwan into American control? As in “Taiwan, you don’t have the cards right now, you don’t have the cards” Is this correct?

  33. I thought this was initiated under Biden and now Trump is claiming credit ?

  34. What’s worse is he’ll renege on any promises
    of protection. We literally have the worst human possible running the country.

  35. Hope the president of Taiwan will remember wear suit  when China invades Taiwan

  36. So, basically Trump has ensured that non-American companies will avoid the USA like the fucking plague unless they’ve got no choice.

Comments are closed.