TSMC Breaks Ground On Third Plant In Arizona
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
TSMC has broken ground on a third processor facility in Arizona
Following CHIPS act funding, Apple's iPhone processor manufacturer TSMC has continued its Arizona investment with the company breaking ground on a third chip fabrication facility.
Five years after it first announced plans to build one processor plant in Arizona, TSMC has now begun work on its third, benefiting from funding it got from the CHIPS Act signed in 2022.
President Trump now vocally opposes the CHIPS Act, despite setting up a new monitoring framework for it. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick was nonetheless on hand to credit Trump with the new factory.
"We are at TSMC Arizona to celebrate the return of American manufacturing," said Lutnick in a statement. "President Trump's bold leadership and clear direction are driving companies and jobs back to this country at a record pace."
The new plant is part of a $100 billion investment that TSMC will make over the next four years. According to the White House, the investment is expected to create 40,000 construction jobs over that period, as well as tens of thousands of technology jobs.
When it is finished, the new plant will make processors for a range of firms, including Nvidia, AMD, and Apple.
[...] The Arizona plants are not fully self-reliant. Processors made in Arizona still have to be sent back to Taiwan for finishing for now, meaning they are then subject to Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs when Apple re-imports them. Apple has a deal with AMCOR to finish in the US, but that partnership will take years to come to fruition.
It's not clear how long TSMC expects construction on the new facility to take, although Tucson Weekly cites unspecified sources saying operation should begin in 2030.
[...] At one point, it was reported that the company ultimately intended to build six plants by 2024. However, construction of the second plant didn't begin until 2022 and now won't be operational until 2028.
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