TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments last month about Taiwan stealing the U.S.’ chip industry have led to rebuttals from experts.

In a Bloomberg interview on June 25, Trump accused Taiwan of stealing “almost 100%” of the U.S.’ chip business. However, industry sources said that Taiwan grew its own chip industry because of hard work and investment, per CNN.

Morris Chang (張忠謀), who started Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in 1987, had previously worked with semiconductor company Texas Instruments. Other industry leaders at the time included Intel and Motorola.

However, Taiwan had little strength in sales and marketing, Chang said in a 2007 oral history project. “The only possible strength that Taiwan had, and even that was a potential one, not an obvious one, was semiconductor manufacturing.”

This was the birth of TSMC’s “pure-play foundry” model. Under this model, foundries only produce other companies’ semiconductor devices and they do not design them.

This approach has helped TSMC become the global giant it is today. It now produces more than 90% of the world’s advanced chips, reported CNN.

Christopher Miller, author of “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology” said because of the approach, “TSMC could focus on manufacturing and be very good at it, and more importantly, it could manufacture for multiple different customers, which would let the company scale up.”

Scale is critical to TSMC’s success as it tends to generate more revenue, which can be funneled into improving chip production technologies, Miller added.

Former research and development director at TSMC Konrad Young said top-tier engineers, relatively low labor costs, and long working hours have led to better productivity. “These are factors that are nearly impossible to duplicate,” he added.