[POST] For want of a chip, the supply chain was lost

Bifurcating the global economy over Taiwan is a back-to-the-future strategy

Jun 02, 2025

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Let us adapt this famous poem to America’s current strategic circumstances vis-a-vis China.

To that end, I offer Taylor’s version:

For want of a chip, the supply chain was lost.
For want of a supply chain, the factory was lost.
For want of a factory, the export was lost.
For want of an export, the market was lost.
For want of a market, the alliance was lost.
For want of an alliance, the order was lost.
And all for want of a chip from Taiwan.

Spelling out the underlying logic:

For want of a chip, the supply chain was lost: The US-China trade conflict, particularly as it pertains to US reliance on foreign sources of advanced semiconductors, has led to a Cold War-like effort by the US to isolate China within such global supply chains. It is a task both politically Herculean and supremely damaging to all involved economies.
For want of a supply chain, the factory was lost: As supply chains are disrupted, companies are forced to relocate manufacturing out of China, often at great cost and complexity. Until recently, the natural work-around of moving assembly operations to SE Asia (particularly Vietnam) worked just fine and made sense, because that is where the demographic center-of-gravity is presently found on “cheap labor.” Now, that “China +1” strategy is being directly targeted by the Trump Administration.
For want of a factory, the export was lost: With manufacturing shifting and tariffs rising, exports falter, affecting global trade flows. Trump’s tariff war and TACO (i.e., Trump Always Chickens Out) tactics have re-created the COVID 19-like stuttering of global exports. The implementation of steep tariffs on Chinese goods has forced companies to rapidly reassess sourcing strategies, shift production, and manage sudden cost increases. These changes lead to higher prices for raw materials and finished goods, visible shortages, and delays, much like the bottlenecks and scarcities experienced during the COVID-19 crisis.
For want of an export, the market was lost: Markets shrink as goods become more expensive or unavailable, hurting both American and Chinese firms. Nobody wins this contest, as usual.
For want of a market, the alliance was lost: Geopolitical tensions rise, alliances shift, and countries are pressured to choose sides in the new economic blocs forming around the US and China. Early returns on Latin America and Africa say we’re losing and that East Asia in general isn’t eager to choose sides. The rest is up for grabs but with China in the lead.
For want of an alliance, the order was lost: The global balance of power is destabilized, with ripple effects across economies and security arrangements, creating the sense — and reality — of globalization itself tanking. The global economy was in steady recovery trajectory until Trump got into office. The US economy was considered the envy of the advanced world … until Trump got into office. Globalization is radically digitalizing itself the world over, but now that dynamic is forking into two us-or-them geopolitical camps. It is a competition for which China’s economy is far better suited than America’s — given the former’s developmental “proximity” to the Global South’s most pressing needs, particularly as they revolve around adapting to climate change.
And all for want of a chip from Taiwan: The entire chain traces back to the strategic importance of Taiwan's semiconductor industry and the risks posed by instability or decoupling in this sector. If we remove this narrow rationale, does America feel the same dangerous urgency? Because, to me, it feels like we’re risking our entire world over this one scenario which has zero strategic importance outside of the potential for immediate disruption of high-end microchip manufacturing and supply chains.

In sum, the poem’s metaphor makes clear that in complex, interconnected systems, small disruptions—especially at critical nodes—can have outsized, far-reaching impacts, underscoring the risks inherent in US-China trade decoupling over Taiwan.

Tom’s 2nd verse (explicit):

For want of an order, the strategic ambiguity is lost.
For want of that ambiguity, the military balance of East Asia is lost.
For want of that balance, US-China comity is lost.
For want of that comity, superpower economic couplings are lost.
For want of those couplings, globalization is lost.
For want of globalization, the decades-long great-power peace is lost.
And all for want of that order.

Again, spelling out the underlying logic:

For want of an order, the strategic ambiguity is lost: If we now live in a world where Canada and Greenland should fear for their future at the hands of the US, and Ukraine just has to give it up to Russia (or else!), then we live in a world in which China can invade Taiwan, taking advantage of that loss of strategic ambiguity that — until recently — stealthily stated that neither superpower wants to risk WWIII over this. Based on America’s long-modeled behavior and Washington’s recent and ongoing acquiescence to ethnic-cleansing land grabs like Ukraine and Gaza, Beijing now knows full well it can pursue an invasion with an acceptably small risk of nuclear escalation.
For want of that ambiguity, the military balance of East Asia is lost: The hawks of all involved nations, but especially the US, can now argue for the inevitability of direct superpower war over Taiwan, necessitating a Cold War-like military buildup and even a resurrection of the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) in the form of Trump’s Golden Dome — an entirely destabilizing concept that suggests the US may well seek to use strategic weapons against its enemies in the belief that their counter-strikes can be comprehensively nullified.
For want of that balance, US-China comity is lost: If we’re on the inevitable pathway to war, then it’s time to elevate our global competition with China from mere economic integration of the rising Global South — a competition we have little ambition for — to one of bifurcating the global economy in a manner reminiscent of the Cold War, thus accommodating arms races, proxy wars, and the like.
For want of that comity, superpower economic couplings are lost: That means we decouple with China to the fullest extent possible, “containing” their global influence to the fullest extent possible. And yes, that may well have to include a US-EU decoupling as the Europeans, having their hands full with Russia as the US exits that fight, evince little-to-no desire to pick a second Cold War-like fight with China on behalf of an isolationist America First that has already signaled it no longer has NATO’s back.
For want of those couplings, globalization is lost: De-coupling raises the cost of doing business the world over, slowing global economic growth and breaking what had been a steadily expanding chain of integration from Europe/North America to Japan to the Tigers to China to SE Asia to India and ultimately from India to Africa (with a serious assist from the rising PG monarchies). Now we see global value chains disrupted and recast along a reconstituted East-versus-West axis, with the much-needed North-South integration stymied for the foreseeable future. Alas, this is an old tale that goes back generations.
For want of globalization, the great-power peace is lost: The North’s superpowers engage in proxy wars across the Global South and in “probing” conflicts across the recognized boundaries demarcating various spheres of influence. The world becomes crisscrossed with “arcs of instability.”
And all for want of that order: At the end of the day, none of this is inevitable. Instead, history will assign most of the blame to the US’s inability to accommodate that which it spent decades constructing: a peaceful, economically globalizing world within which various superpowers and great powers could peacefully rise. When America bumped up against the strategic reality that it was no longer in charge and would be forced by globalization’s competitive pressures into recasting itself from dominant market-maker to mere market-player, it basically lost its mind and decided to trash the entire world order in the hopes of recreating the dominance it once enjoyed. And yes, this can be summed up as the Boomers trying to recreate their golden youth — it’s that pointlessly stupid.

A sad, tragic story indeed, and certainly not one of economic determinism. These are all political failures on America’s part. America simply chose to ruin the globalization peace after winning the Cold War.

Again, history will blame our Boomer generation of leadership for their profound lack of strategic understanding and it will blame our citizenry for our combined lack of national courage when it came to simply taking the win and moving on to what is necessarily next — namely, vigorous North-South integration in response to climate change and demographic collapse.

Like Sam Elliot’s character of General Buford on the eve of the Gettysburg battle, I can see it all.

A clip from the 1993 movie Gettysburg: