Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company will unveil an investment of $100bn in advanced manufacturing in the US, in an effort to ward off possible tariffs on chips from Taiwan.
A Trump administration official said that the world’s largest chipmaker would make the announcement on Monday, as chief executive CC Wei meets the US president at the White House.
The move is the latest overture by big business to Trump in recent weeks. 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 immediately clear if the $100bn investment was an additional funding commitment, or included some of the money previously pledged.
Trump wants to tax imported semiconductors and dismantle an incentive scheme under which Washington agreed to subsidise TSMC’s pledged $65bn investment in US production capacity with grants worth $6.6bn.
“In the very near future, we’re going to be placing tariffs on foreign production of computer chips . . . to return production of these essential goods to the [US],” Trump told House Republicans on January 27.
This is a developing story