Following Apple’s US$500 billion record United States investment announcement last week, U.S. President Donald Trump announced yesterday that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co also plans to invest a further $100 billion in the U.S. by the end of the decade.
The global market leader in semiconductor manufacturing - dubbed by Trump the ‘most powerful company in the world’ - will use the new capital to build three more chip manufacturing plants, along with two packaging facilities.
TSMC’s plans align with Trump’s aim of bringing more manufacturing to the U.S. and making it an artificial intelligence (AI) hub.
Trump believes manufacturing chips and semiconductors in American factories with American skill and American labor is critical to America’s economic and national security.
“In total, today’s announcement brings Taiwan Semiconductor's investments to about $165 billion – they’ve started already – among the largest new foreign direct investments in the United States,” said Trump who has repeatedly called out and accused Taiwan of stealing the U.S. chip manufacturing business.
“Semiconductors are the backbone of the 21st-century economy and really, without the semiconductors, there is no economy, powering everything from AI to automobiles to advanced manufacturing,” Trump said.
TSMC is no stranger to the U.S. with the company committing $12 billion in 2020 to build its first U.S. chip factory in Arizona, which has started mass production of 4-nanometer chips.
TSMC subsequently increased that investment to $65 billion with a third factory, and has also gained U.S. government support through a $6.6 billion subsidy from the U.S. Commerce Department.
Recent initiatives by the Trump administration follow former President Joe Biden’s 2022 $280 billion law, the CHIPS and Science Act, aimed at reinvigorating chip manufacturing in the U.S., especially after the covid pandemic.
The shut down of overseas chip factories during the pandemic had a ripple effect leading to the closure of car factory assembly lines and heightened inflation.
Highly critical of the CHIPS and Science Act, Trump threatened to impose high tariffs on imported chips in an attempt to bring chip manufacturing back to the U.S.
Trump's announcement today follows plans released by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank last January to invest up to $500 billion in infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence.
Also announced in January was a $20 billion investment by DAMAC Properties in the United Arab Emirates to build data centers tied to AI.
Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook also announced plans to invest more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. This includes plans for an additional server factory in Texas.
