Does the concentration of leading-edge chipmaking give TSMC pricing power over its customers?

Customers limit the foundry's reach

TSMC's pricing power is bounded because its customers can shift some volume to alternative processes, negotiate against each other's roadmaps, or absorb cost pressure elsewhere in their own margins rather than accept every increase. A parallel case shows the limit of pure process leadership as leverage: upstream, ASML's lithography monopoly concentrates pricing power at the equipment layer, leaving room for customers to contest how much of that leverage TSMC itself can pass through. This side holds that customer pushback, not unchecked supplier leverage, sets the ceiling on what TSMC can charge.

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