As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House in January next year, companies like Taiwan's TSMC are rushing to finalize semiconductor subsidy negotiations with the Biden administration.
On the 7th (local time), Bloomberg reported that the world's largest foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing) company TSMC and the U.S. foundry company GlobalFoundries have completed binding contract negotiations regarding tens of billions of dollars in subsidies and loans for factories in the United States.
It remains unclear when the contracts will be officially signed, but sources cited said the scale of the subsidies and loans is almost the same as what the U.S. government previously announced.
Earlier, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced in April that under the CHIPS Act, it would provide TSMC with $6.6 billion in subsidies and $5 billion in low-interest loans to establish a semiconductor factory in Arizona. Additionally, in February, GlobalFoundries was announced to receive $1.5 billion in subsidies and $1.6 billion in loans to build new factories and expand production facilities in New York and Vermont.
The CHIPS Act, enacted in 2022 under the Biden administration, aims to support the establishment of advanced semiconductor supply chains within the United States. It provides a total of $52.7 billion over five years, including $39 billion in semiconductor production subsidies and $13.2 billion in research and development (R&D) grants to semiconductor companies investing in the U.S. Both American companies and major global semiconductor firms such as South Korea's Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and TSMC are expected to receive subsidies in exchange for building factories in the United States.
Regarding this, President-elect Trump described it as "really bad" during the election period. His argument is that very high tariffs should be imposed on semiconductors so that foreign semiconductor companies come to the U.S. and establish semiconductor factories for free.
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