Workers With A Disability, Men (Purple) And Women (Black), Age 16 to 64 Years
Workers With A Disability, Men (Purple) And Women (Black), Age 16 to 64 Years
The US plans to award Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. $6.6 billion in grants and as much as $5 billion in loans to help the world’s top chipmaker build factories in Arizona, expanding President Joe Biden’s effort to boost domestic production of critical technology.
Under the preliminary agreement announced by the US on Monday, TSMC will construct a third factory in Phoenix, adding to two facilities in the state that are expected to begin production in 2025 and 2028. In total, the package will support more than $65 billion in investments at the three plants by TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for companies such as Apple Inc. and Nvidia Corp.
TSMC’s third fabrication site, or fab, will rely on next-generation 2-nanometer process technology, and is slated to be operational before the end of the decade. US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the 2nm chips are essential to emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, as well as for the military.
“For the first time ever, we will be making at scale the most advanced semiconductor chips on the planet here in the United States of America, by the way, with American workers,” Raimondo told reporters in a briefing ahead of the announcement. TSMC is planning to first make 2nm chips in Taiwan in 2025.
TSMC’s award marks another milestone in Biden’s push to boost the US semiconductor industry with the 2022 Chips and Science Act. It’s one of the largest announced under the program, which set aside $39 billion in direct grants — plus loans and guarantees worth $75 billion — to persuade semiconductor companies to build factories in America after decades of shifting production abroad.
TSMC’s American depositary receipts rose as much as 2.8% Monday morning in New York to $145.35.
Intel Corp. has already inked a preliminary agreement for nearly $20 billion in grants and loans, while Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea is expected to receive a grant of more than $6 billion. The Commerce Department has also handed three awards to companies that manufacture older-generation chips and is expected to announce a multibillion dollar package for Micron Technology Inc. in coming weeks.
Companies have announced more than $200 billion in US investments since Biden took office, with the biggest clusters emerging in Arizona, Texas and New York. The agreement unveiled Monday emerged after months of negotiations with the Commerce Department and TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker by market share.
Read more: TSMC to Win More Than $5 Billion in Grants for US Chip Plant
“The proposed funding from the CHIPS and Science Act would provide TSMC the opportunity to make this unprecedented investment and to offer our foundry service of the most advanced manufacturing technologies in the United States,” TSMC Chairman Mark Liu said in a statement.
TSMC’s work in Phoenix carries added political stakes for Biden, who defeated Donald Trump in Arizona by roughly 10,000 votes in 2020 and is seeking another win in the closely contested state to help secure reelection. Though its Arizona investment was initiated during Trump’s final year in office, TSMC’s projects in the state have become increasingly entwined with Biden’s campaign message on revitalizing the economy.
Arizona has reaped some of the biggest rewards from the Chips Act, with a massive expansion by Intel in addition to dozens of supply-chain initiatives. The TSMC grant includes $50 million in funding to train local workers, and will create 6,000 high-tech manufacturing jobs and more than 20,000 construction jobs, Raimondo said.
Read more: Biden’s $100 Billion Chips Bet Ensnared in Arizona Union Fight
The project also is expected to benefit from a tax credit for investments, according to another senior administration official, who discussed the award on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.
The TSMC site has seen several setbacks, including months of conflict with labor unions that resulted in delays at the first factory. The second facility, which is now slated to begin manufacturing 2nm and 3nm chips in 2028, was delayed from 2026 due to market conditions and uncertainty about levels of US government support. At least one TSMC supplier has scrapped its planned Arizona project, citing workforce difficulties.
The company has other international projects underway in Japan and Germany. TSMC held an opening ceremony this year for its Kumamoto fab, which the Japanese government is backing with subsidies.
On Friday, however, Kennedy issued a statement reaffirming his alarm about how the Department of Justice has proceeded against Jan 6 participants. “I am concerned about the possibility that political objectives motivated the vigor of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their long sentences and their harsh treatment,” wrote Kennedy.That's exactly right. The United States government is the most lethally armed organization in the history of mankind. The very idea of an "insurrection" against it that is worthy of the term, therefore, implies extensive pre-planning, preparatory rehearsals, secret communications networks, detailed D-day organizational protocols and maneuvers, publicly announced manifestos and demands and, of course, the marshalling of an extensive array of arms, ammo and armor.
Kennedy said that, if he is elected, he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether powers were abused for political advantage, and to "right any wrongs" that are found. He also gingerly questioned the notion that Jan. 6 represented an "insurrection," a term embraced by many mainstream media outlets, including the Washington Post:
“I have not examined the evidence in detail, but reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection. They observe that the protestors carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest ‘peacefully.'"
His questioning of the official Jan 6 narrative isn't new. In March of 2023, he said his then-fellow Democrats had "an obsession" with the event. In October, he pointedly ridiculed the idea that the protesters and rioters were in any position to take over the government: "What’s the worst thing that could happen? Right? I mean, we have an entire military, Pentagon, a few blocks away."
Markets recovered their poise over the last 24 hours, as investors were relieved after Fed Chair Powell stuck to his recent views on the economic outlook. In his remarks yesterday, he said that recent data didn’t “materially change the overall picture” and that on inflation “it is too soon to say whether the recent readings represent more than just a bump.” In addition, he reiterated that if “the economy evolves broadly as we expect, most FOMC participants see it as likely to be appropriate to begin lowering the policy rate at some point this year.” So that all helped to validate market pricing, which still expects 71bps of rate cuts from the Fed by the December meeting.Needless to say, the man has no shame. And that's to say nothing of intellectual firepower. There is not even a smidgen of a case that rate cuts in the present context will help main street, and the Fed heads and their Wall Street megaphones don't actually even try to make that argument.
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