https://asianometry.substack.com/p/the-semiconductor-bust-still-coming?s=r
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Hard to listen to someone talk about semiconductor/IC supply without mentioning China's cornering and hording of the semiconductor/IC market.
There are bottlenecks in all electronic assemblies. Processors, crystals, specialized chips, etc. Things you just can't substitute. China identified many bottlenecks and strategically bought the entire supply. For thousands of items.
Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of electronic components. Then they marked them all up 100x and are now selling them back to us.
Supposedly they are just "Chinese brokers", but the scale is far too large not to be government sponsored.
Here's an example: MKL27Z128VFT4 NXP Kinetis ARM Cortex M0+ Microcontroller. You haven't been able to buy these for over a year now. And it will be another year before you can buy any. They used to go for $2.50.
Brokers have 215,000 pieces in stock…Mostly in China. (The US brokers have tied themselves into the Chinese broker inventory.) Average price now: $100 each.