The new wave of U.S. chip manufacturing reflects a paradoxical new reality: Geopolitics are colliding with economics, and what’s good for one is pressuring...
Your next iPhone won’t be stamped Made in America. But pry open the casing in 2025 and you may see semiconductor chips that were etched into silicon in the Arizona desert.
No company is caught in the crosscurrents more than TSMC. Producing the vast majority of advanced semiconductors in Taiwan, TSMC is the lifeblood for tech’s new applications like artificial intelligence and advanced military weaponry. Taiwan, of course, is a geopolitical flashpoint between the U.S. and China, which claims the island as its territory, while the U.S. has indicated that it would defend the island in the event of an invasion or attack.
TSMC, in a statement to Barron’s, said that “many factors” went into building in Arizona, adding, “The U.S. government also supported our decision to invest here.” Apple declined to comment. A spokesperson for TSMC said that it would be more expensive to build in Arizona than Taiwan, “largely due to higher costs associated with construction and facility operations.”
Some analysts say that TSMC decided to build in Arizona more for political than economic reasons. “It was not a business decision,” says Needham analyst Charles Shi. “In Taiwan, the technicians and engineers are highly trained, so you have a high level of equipment throughput, uptime, and fewer defects,” he says.
“There are legitimate concerns about the ability of the U.S. to protect TSMC in the event of a military escalation,” says Setser. “The Chips Act was a strategic hedge against an invasion of the island.” TSMC still plans to produce its most advanced chips in Taiwan. One way to see that is in the race to cram the most transistors on a chip. Transistors are measured in nanometers, the size of a few atoms, with billions of transistors etched into each chip. More than 90% of global chip capacity below 10 nanometers is in Taiwan, and TSMC is on its way down to 2-nm production, leading the global industry.
Security concerns aren’t the only force driving TSMC outside Taiwan. TSMC is riding a huge wave of demand for advanced chips, and the company is outgrowing Taiwan as a production hub, straining its energy, water, and engineering resources. “They really dragged their feet on expanding globally, but eventually you run out of room in Taiwan,” says an industry executive.
Apple probably won’t buy core processors from Arizona for future generations of iPhones; those will almost certainly remain in Taiwan. Jones estimates that Apple will still source 90% of wafers from TSMC’s fabs in Taiwan. But Apple could source chips for things like headphones, Air Tags, older-generation iPhones and iPads, cameras, and power management.
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