Mark Carney and the Semiconductor Industry

At at recent public meeting, Mark Carney, the Liberal Party of Canada leadership heir apparent made the following comment about one aspect of Canada's trading relationship with the United States:

Apparently, in Carney World, Canada is the biggest supplier of semiconductors to the United States.

Let's do a fact check on this comment starting with data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity.  Here is a graphic showing the source nations for U.S. imports of semiconductor devices for 2023:

 

You'll notice that Canada supplies the United States with a massive 0.79 percent of its semiconductor device imports, well below front runners Vietnam at 20.6 percent, Thailand at 17.3 percent, Malaysia at 14.8 percent and Cambodia at 9.69 percent.  In fact, Canada is even behind Mexico which supplies 2.56 percent of American imports of semiconductor devices.

Canada doesn't even rank close to the top of the list when it comes to the manufacturing of semiconductors with Taiwan, South Korea the United States, Japan and China heading the pack when it comes to actually producing semiconductors as shown here:

According to PatentPC, in 2023, the following nations were the highest producers of semiconductors: 

1.) Taiwan - 65 percent

2.) China 16 percent (aiming for 70 percent by 2030)

3.) South Korea - 20 percent

4.) United States - 12 percent

5.) Europe - 9 percent (aiming for 20 percent by 2030)

6.) Japan - 6 percent

India is also positioning itself as a future semiconductor manufacturing nation with government offering incentives to attract foreign chipmakers.

Again, you'll notice that Canada is not even mentioned in the list of the largest semiconductor manufacturing nations but yet it supposedly is the largest supplier of semiconductors to the United States.  Canada does have a semiconductor industry and is home to some of the world's largest semiconductor producers and designers like TSMC, Samsung Electronics, AMD, Qualcomm and Intel, however, the Canadian facilities are branch offices of these major foreign corporations.

So, where did Mark Carney get the idea that Canada is America's largest supplier of semicoducturos?  Who knows?  I would like to see proof of his assertions.  But it certainly would be nice to see the mainstream media fact check his pronouncements once in a while.  I guess that the lesson for all of us is that just because a former two-time central banker says something, doesn't necessarily make it accurate.

Addendum:

Since I posted this item, this announcement was released:

So, it's looking like the United States will be much less reliant on Canada's "massive supply" of semiconductors after all.  See, central bankers don't know everything despite what they would have us believe.