“American manufacturing is back, folks,” Biden said at the Phoenix plant, joined by top politicians and corporate titans like Apple CEO Tim Cook and Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra.
The project by TSMC, the world’s largest maker of next-generation chips, would go a long way toward meeting the United States’ goal of ending reliance on factories located abroad, especially in Taiwan, under constant threat of being taken over or even invaded by China.
TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, announced that it will build a second plant in Phoenix by 2026, bringing its investment in Arizona from $12 billion to $40 billion, with the goal of producing about 600,000 microchips a year.
Some 10,000 high-tech jobs will be created once both plants are up and running, the company said.
Biden was clearly hoping for political gain from the influx of investment, pointing to the effect of his CHIPS Act, which sets aside nearly $53 billion for grants and research in the semiconductor sector.
It’s a message you’ll want to get across in Arizona, which was long a Republican-dominated state but has become a battleground where Democrats are faring better and better.
TSMC’s new plant will produce state-of-the-art 3-nanometer chips, while the current one will begin downsizing its existing 5-nanometer chips to more sophisticated 4-nanometer ones.
Most of the current supply of microchips in the United States comes from abroad. Although most companies are based in trusted US allies in Asia, the enormous distance and, above all, geopolitical tensions around Taiwan worry the US government and companies like Apple.