Semiconductor Industrial Policy, Supply-Chain Resilience, and Sustainable Technological Governance: Comparative Business Systems Evidence from the United States and Taiwan

Abstract

This article examines how semiconductor industrial policy shapes business-system transformation, economic security, innovation governance, and sustainable socio-economic development. Using a comparative institutional case study of the United States and Taiwan, the article argues that semiconductor resilience is not achieved through self-sufficiency but through institutionally coordinated complementarity across design, fabrication, equipment, talent, finance, regulation, and sustainability infrastructure. The United States represents a market-led innovation economy now reactivating industrial policy through the CHIPS and Science Act, research subsidies, manufacturing incentives, workforce programs, and technology-security governance. Taiwan represents a specialized production ecosystem built around foundry leadership, dense supplier networks, state-supported technology upgrading, export-oriented industrial coordination, and the global dominance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. The comparison reveals that the United States retains structural strength in chip design, electronic design automation, intellectual property, venture finance, and AI demand formation, but faces weaknesses in fabrication capacity, workforce pipelines, permitting, and industrial execution. Taiwan possesses unmatched advanced manufacturing capabilities, process innovation, supplier coordination, and customer trust, but faces geopolitical exposure, energy and water constraints, sustainability pressures, and industrial concentration risk. The article contributes to comparative business systems, innovation policy, economic security, and sustainable industrial governance scholarship by developing propositions on strategic complementarity, institutional execution capacity, resilient specialization, and sustainability-constrained technological competitiveness.