What if Japan weaponizes its photoresist and etching-gas exports?
Japan curbing photoresist, fluorinated polyimide and etching gas to China replays its 2019 Korea playbook, hitting the materials chokepoint where Japan holds ~70-90% share and squeezing Chinese fab output. Rhymes directly with the July-2019 Japan-Korea export-control spat that rattled Samsung/Hynix but ultimately spurred Korean localization. China is the target; the forward angle is that the 2019 episode proved buyers eventually re-source, so the initial TSMC -3.9% panic typically fades as substitution and stockpiles cushion the blow.
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The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 0–6 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Tokyo curbs ultra-pure photoresist, fluorinated polyimide, and etching-gas exports, mirroring its 2019 Korea playbook against China. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Semiconductor supply risk ▲ · Trade tension ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.