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作成日: 2024/03/06 19:39

更新日: 2025/12/08 16:49

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Semiconductors are back to center stage in the Japan-U.S. alliance
Brad Glosserman

The Japan Times
Semiconductors are again a focus of the Japan-U.S. alliance.

Unlike the first time this happened — in the 1980s and ‘90s when the two governments faced similar tension in the relationship — they are now a point of convergence and cooperation for the allies.

Tokyo and Washington are working together, bilaterally and in other forums, to build a stable semiconductor supply chain and ensure their continuing position at the leading edge of this critical technology. This trajectory is not guaranteed to continue, however. Enduring success requires partnership among all four players — governments and industry in both countries — which will ultimately rest on the political relationship and trust that they share.

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of semiconductors to the 21st century. They’re everywhere and in every digital item. For example, the average car has about 1,400 chips and some have as many as 3,000. Over 1 trillion chips are made each year and the market reached $618 billion in 2022.

In the early 1980s, the U.S. had more than half the world market share. By the end of the decade, it had been overtaken by Japan, a shift that infuriated U.S. politicians and industry professionals. That development was either dismissed as the result of unfair business practices or heralded as proof that Japan would soon surpass the U.S. as the world’s leading economy.

Allegations of cheating were settled through a trade deal; the prospect of Japan becoming number one was put to bed by “the lost decade” of the 1990s and the subsequent failure of the economy to find traction.

The U.S. industry has largely recovered; in 2020, U.S.-based companies had a little under half (47.2%) of the global semiconductor market. Japan has struggled. While six of the world’s top 10 chip makers were Japanese in 1989 — its manufacturers had about half the market — by 2023, no Japanese company cracked the top 10 list (when calculated by revenue). In 2022, Japan’s total market share was in the single digits.

Worried about the central position of China in global supply chains, including those for semiconductors, the size of the Indo-Pacific market in global chip production and sales (topping 61%), and the prospect of a crisis that could unravel those production networks, both Japan and the U.S. have been working to create resilience and reshore semiconductor manufacturing.

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