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The writer is the former director of the Chips Program Office at the US Department of Commerce
At the start of this month, President Donald Trump and CC Wei, chief executive of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, announced that TSMC would invest $100bn at its chip fabrication site in Arizona, adding to an existing $65bn commitment. TSMC is the world’s dominant manufacturer of semiconductors, particularly advanced “leading-edge” logic chips. The plan represents a significant win for US national security.
Unfortunately, the announcement has also provided occasion for some members of the current administration, including Trump, to call into question the utility of the US Chips Act, which has been a critical catalyst for TSMC’s investments. These critics cast the 2022 act as a partisan Biden-era effort and argue that tariffs are sufficient to achieve the goal of revitalising US semiconductor manufacturing. Having served as the director of the Chips Program Office at the Department of Commerce, I want to explain why they are mistaken.
The Chips Act is at the centre of a strategy, years in the making, to turbocharge US semiconductor manufacturing. During the first Trump administration, officials and lawmakers recognised the urgent need to forge such a strategy. Semiconductors are the foundational technology for all advanced computing. They are also ubiquitous in technologies that drive everyday life, from cars to medical devices to fighter jets.
Yet the US share of global semiconductor manufacturing had declined from nearly 40 per cent in 1990 to around 10 per cent. Leading-edge manufacturing, which fuels artificial intelligence computing, had declined to zero. Essential supply chains were dangerously vulnerable to concentrated production in Taiwan. China was investing vast sums in an effort to dominate production.
In response, senior Trump administration officials engaged with TSMC in 2020 to secure a $12bn commitment to build a single fabrication facility — or fab — in the US. Around the same time, a bipartisan group of lawmakers began discussions that culminated in the Chips Act. This provided $39bn in grant funding and a 25 per cent investment tax credit to jump-start semiconductor manufacturing in the US, as well as $13.7bn to advance research and development, workforce and global supply chain resilience.
Since the Chips Act passed, the funding has unlocked an unprecedented boom in domestic semiconductor manufacturing investment.
TSMC was a centrepiece of our plans. It is, as Trump recently called it, “the most powerful company in the world”. In 2022, TSMC was struggling with the construction of its first US fab. The prevailing industry view was that the operation would become an isolated outpost rather than a thriving source of growth. After more than a year of negotiations, we executed a $6.6bn award that secured TSMC’s commitment to invest $65bn across three fabs and onshore the most advanced sub-2 nanometre technologies.
When TSMC unveiled a replica in the lobby of its Arizona office building it showed the site as a full six-fab “gigafab.” The company’s announcement this month represents a public commitment to this vision. It also includes commitments to build two advanced packaging facilities and a new centre for research and development. These are consequential commitments that promise to strengthen our economic and national security for generations to come.
The success of the Chips Act extends far beyond TSMC.
Since it was first authorised, the US has seen more investment in electronics manufacturing than in the previous 30 years combined. Semiconductor manufacturers have announced plans to invest more than $500bn in the US. For the first time, all five of the world’s leading-edge chip manufacturers — Intel, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix and TSMC — are building and expanding here. No other economy in the world has more than two of these companies manufacturing on its shores.
This nationwide wave of investment, across dozens of projects, cannot be attributed to the threat of tariffs; it is due to the successful implementation of the Chips Act. Undermining the act at this moment could reverse the progress made and hand an advantage to China.
Republican senator Todd Young recently called the Chips Act “one of the greatest successes of our time”. There is a tradition in our country of administrations of different parties working sequentially to advance critical national security priorities. These days, that may feel like a relic of the past. But in the case of the Chips Act, it can and should be a thing of the present.
