The US-Japanese war over semiconductor pricing threatens to become a deal more bitter following the report of an investigation of US chip manufacturers by Japan’s Ministry of International Trade & Industry, MITI. According to Newsbytes, the MITI report claims that several US manufacturers, Texas Instruments among them, have been found selling semi-finished chips to manufacturers in the Far East, notably in Singapore and Taiwan at below cost price, so that the local companies could finish them and sell them back cheaply to the originator’s US customers – the very practice for which the US has so fiercely criticised Japanese manufacturers. Not too surprisingly, the MITI findings have infuriated Japanese manufacturers hurt by the chip settlement.
