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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company will unveil an investment of $100bn in advanced manufacturing in the US as the world’s biggest chipmaker tries to ward off possible tariffs on chips from Taiwan.
A White House official said TSMC would announce the investment on Monday, as chief executive CC Wei meets President Donald Trump.
The move is the latest overture by business to Trump, as companies announce measures to placate the president amid his aggressive push to impose levies on US trading partners.
Last week, Apple announced that it would spend more than $500bn in the US over the next four years.
TSMC has already committed $65bn to build fabrication facilities in Arizona. It was not clear if the $100bn investment was a separate funding commitment or included some of the money previously pledged.
Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on imports of chips, which would have a dramatic impact on Taiwan’s economy. Taipei has been considering a range of measures to appease his administration, including offering to buy weapons from the US.
TSMC said it was “pleased to have an opportunity to meet with the president and look forward to discussing our shared vision for innovation and growth in the semiconductor industry”.
Pressure has been building on TSMC for months following Trump’s repeated accusations that Taiwan “stole” the US semiconductor business.
Tariffs would expose TSMC to pressure from its American customers to shoulder some of the resulting costs. However, its bigger concern was that Trump could rescind a Biden-era contract under which Washington agreed to support its US facilities with more than $6bn in subsidies.
When asked in January if he would attend Trump’s inauguration, Wei said he would not, adding that “we keep a low profile”, continuing an approach the company has followed ever since its creation in 1987.
The investment marks a further expansion of TSMC’s footprint in the US. During Trump’s first term, the group initially pledged to build one fabrication plant using five-nanometre technology, but later agreed to use more advanced 4nm technology in the facility.
It also agreed to build a second facility that would use 2nm by 2028, expected then to be the most cutting-edge, and set up a third fab in the US by the end of the decade.
That expansion increased TSMC’s planned investment in Arizona to $65bn.
Unlike its customers such as Nvidia, which designs and markets chips, or Intel, which designs semiconductors but also manufactures some itself, TSMC exclusively produces chips to the others’ designs.
This approach has allowed it to hone its execution skills in the increasingly complex manufacturing of cutting-edge chips. TSMC now holds a more than 90 per cent share of the market for making the most advanced chips.
TSMC’s latest announcement, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes after Trump administration officials had in recent weeks floated suggestions for the group to massively step up its investment in the US to placate the president.
The proposals have included TSMC helping to run fabs for Intel, which has fallen behind its Taiwanese rival in cutting-edge manufacturing.
Another idea involved a TSMC equity investment in Intel, or a spin-off of the Taiwanese chipmaker’s American operations into a company with a US government stake, according to people familiar with the situation.
