TSMC to spend $100 billion in U.S.

TECHNOLOGY

Chipmaker will use money over next 4 years to expand

TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) said it will spend $100 billion over the next four years in the U.S. to expand production. CHIANG YING-YING, FILE — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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By Tripp Mickle

The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO >> President Donald Trump said Monday that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest chip manufacturer, will spend $100 billion in the United States over the next four years to expand its production capacity and bring its most advanced semiconductor processes to its operations in Arizona.

The investment will allow TSMC to begin making artificial intelligence and smartphone chips in Arizona, Trump said.

With the commitment, TSMC brings its planned total spending in the United States to $165 billion. The money will expand the company’s footprint in Arizona from three manufacturing plants to six, add 25,000 jobs and create a research and development center to develop future production processes.TSMC’s expansion comes after years of work to rev up domestic manufacturing of semiconductors. For more than five years, Washington officials have been concerned that TSMC’s dominance of the chip industry had created a national security risk. They feared that the United States could lose access to those advanced chips, which were produced in Taiwan, because Beijing wants to reclaim the island as part of China.

The previous Trump administration began to lobby TSMC to build plants in the United States. The Biden administration advanced those efforts by passing the CHIPS Act, a bipartisan bill that provided $39 billion in federal funding for the construction of new and expanded manufacturing facilities to make the tiny electronics that power everything from cars to iPads.

During a White House event, Trump said that TSMC’s investment would reduce America’s national security risk and encourage other companies to make more of their products in the United States.

“Semiconductors are the backbone of the 21st century economy, and really without the semiconductors, there is no economy,” Trump said, adding that “we must be able to build the chips and semiconductors that we need right here in American factories, with American skill and American labor.”

Appearing alongside Trump, C.C. Wei, TSMC’s CEO, said the company would begin making AI chips and smartphone chips in the United States. He added that the factory expansion had been supported by U.S. customers, including Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and Broadcom.

Trump said the investment would help TSMC avoid tariffs of 25% or more on chips manufactured in Taiwan. Since taking office in January, he had threatened tariffs of 100% on Taiwanese chips and criticized the CHIPS Act for failing to get companies like TSMC to make more chips domestically.