By John Tamny
Publication Date: 2026-01-08 15:00:00
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 18: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote address during the Nvidia GTC Artificial Intelligence Conference at SAP Center on March 18, 2024 in San Jose, California. The developer conference is expected to highlight new chip, software, and AI processor technology. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
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China can’t invade Taiwan with guns and bombs, and Xi Jinping knows why. So incredibly intricate are the operations of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in Hsinchu Science Park that even the most minute jolt born of a distant bomb could take TSMC’s factory offline, and with it, a global economy increasingly reliant on the computer chips manufactured there.
This is worth remembering as critics from left, right, and center criticize President Trump and Nvidia for allowing the world’s most valuable corporation to sell its world-leading chips in China. There’s surprising consensus among the frequently warring ideologies, and the broad agreement is that Nvidia’s sales into China threaten the U.S.’s national security. The stances are puzzling, and that’s true whether they come from the left or right.
It’s easy to forget that support for open lanes of trade has informed left-wing thought for centuries. As University of Exeter professor Marc-William Palen conveyed in his 2024 book, Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World (my review here), theorists as hard left as Marx and Engels embraced free…
