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WASHINGTON (AP) — Chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plans to invest $100 billion in the United States, President Donald Trump said Monday, on top of $65 billion in investments the company had previously announced.
TSMC, the world’s biggest semiconductor manufacturer, produces chips for companies including Apple, Intel and Nvidia. The company had already begun constructing three plants in Arizona after the Biden administration offered billions in subsidies. Its first factory in Arizona has started mass production of its 4-nanometer chips.
Trump, who appeared with TSMC’s chief executive officer C. C. Wei at the White House, called it a “tremendous move” and "a matter of economic security.”
“Semiconductors are the backbone of the 21st century economy. And really, without the semiconductors, there is no economy," the president said. "Powering everything from AI to automobiles to advanced manufacturing, we must be able to build the chips and semiconductors that we need right here in American factories with Americans skill and American labor.”
Wei said the investment will be for three more chip manufacturing plants, along with two packaging facilities, in Arizona.
The $165 billion investment "is going to create thousands of high-paying jobs,” Wei said.
Former President Joe Biden in 2022 signed a sweeping $280 billion law, the CHIPS and Science Act, to try to reinvigorate chip manufacturing in the U.S., especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the pandemic, chip factories, especially those overseas making the majority of processors, shut down. It had a ripple effect that led to wider problems, such as automobile factory assembly lines shutting down and fueled inflation.
Trump has criticized the law and taken a different approach, instead threatening to impose high tariffs on imported chips to bring chip manufacturing back to the U.S.
Trump also has said companies like TSMC do not need federal tax incentives.
When asked if the new investment could minimize impact on the U.S. should China either isolate or seize Taiwan, Trump said he couldn’t say “minimize” because “that would be a catastrophic event obviously.”
Taiwan is an island that broke away from mainland China in 1949 following a civil war. Beijing claims sovereignty over the island and has ratcheted up military and diplomatic pressure on its leaders.
“It will at least give us a position where we have, in this very, very important business, we would have a very big part of it in the United States,” Trump said of the chip manufacturing.