‘It’s The Key’: Chips Giant Breaks Ground On Third US Plant

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) broke ground Tuesday on its third factory in Arizona, widening the Trump administration’s push to yank critical chip production out of China’s shadow, according to the Department of Commerce.

The new fab — backed by some $6.6 billion in CHIPS Act grants and part of a broader $100 billion expansion pledge TSMC made in March — is slated to provide thousands of local jobs and anchor a domestic supply chain for everything from smartphones to fighter jet avionics, according to a TSMC press release.

“It’s the key,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said of domestic chip manufacturing’s national security implications in an interview with CNBC. “If we don’t produce semiconductors, we can’t make drones to protect ourselves. We can’t make fighter jets to protect ourselves. We can’t do anything unless we’ve got sufficient chips … It’s time for America to take care of itself, and that’s what we’re here to do.”

Trump officials like Lutnick see the desert campus — now slated to house three advanced plants by 2030 — as insurance against a Taiwan Strait crisis that could choke off roughly 92% of the world’s cutting-edge chips, according to the Commerce Department. The administration’s message to the industry is blunt: build here or face steeper tariffs.

“ didn’t commit to the extra $100 billion, which is basically six more plants here, without the tariffs. They never would have done it,” Lutnick said. “They got paid $6 billion by Biden to build $65 billion worth of plants and they were done and dusted. Then we came in and said ‘more.’ Much bigger, much bigger, much bigger. And they went an extra $100 billion, which is the largest single foreign direct investment ever made in the United States of America.”