President Trump last month attacked the bipartisan CHIPS Act, seeking to dismantle it, and a new reports says that the White House now appears to have started work on doing so.
A chipmaker’s industry association – whose members include TSMC – held a call in which they expressed concerns about the impact on their plans for new US plants …
‘Made in America’ Apple chips
Apple first announced its plan for ‘Made in America’ chips back in 2022, with the news hailed as one of the success stories of the US CHIPS Act. This is a government subsidy program intended to free the US from dependence on foreign countries for advanced chip supplies and to generate jobs for US workers.
The initiative will see a series of TSMC chipmaking plants built in Arizona, with some of the production reserved for Apple chips for older devices. Mass production is expected to begin soon at the first of these plants.
Trump’s attacks on the CHIPS Act
We noted last month that Trump is unhappy with the deal, and has indicated that the White House might renege on it.
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.
While TSMC appeared to have reached an uneasy truce with the administration, announcing a $100M investment in return for continued support, this has now been thrown into doubt by a new speech by Trump.
Chipmakers held a conference call to discuss
The administration has already made layoffs in the team managing CHIPS Act grants, and The New York Times reports that chipmakers held a conference call to discuss Trump’s latest remarks, in which he went off-script in a speech and called on Congress to reverse the Act.
Republican lawmakers had sought and received reassurances over the past few months that the Trump administration would support the program Congress created. But halfway through Mr. Trump’s remarks, he called the law a “horrible, horrible thing.”
“You should get rid of the CHIP Act,” he told Speaker Mike Johnson […]
The day after Mr. Trump’s speech, the Semiconductor Industry Association organized a call with member companies, said three people familiar with the discussion. During the call, people chalked up Mr. Trump’s frustration with the law to personal animus with Mr. Biden […]
Chip company executives, worried that funding could be clawed back, are calling lawyers to ask what wiggle room the administration has to terminate signed contracts, said eight people familiar with the requests.
SIA members include AMD, ARM, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and TSMC.
If CHIPS Act funding is placed at risk, it’s unclear what impact this would have on TSMC’s plans for future plants – including the $100M investment recently announced.
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