Trump Admits Threatening TSMC with 100% Tax Increase to Attract Company to US

Current US President Donald Trump’s extensive track record of negotiating allows him to release information to the public in chunks when it is appropriate. He recently said that he had threatened to impose taxes of up to 100% when trying to persuade TSMC to build more factories in the US.

Image Source: ASML

Ironically, after Taiwan’s TSMC decided to build five more factories in the U.S. and spend an additional $100 billion, Donald Trump imposed tariffs of up to 42% on Taiwanese goods, excluding semiconductor components. The issue of tariffs for this category of products requires more detailed study and is therefore postponed for the future, and this pause does not mean that Taiwanese semiconductor products will not be subject to tariffs when imported into the U.S.

Speaking at an event organized by the US Republican Party, Donald Trump this week once again criticized his predecessor’s initiative to provide TSMC with $6.6 billion in subsidies to build factories in Arizona. According to the current US president, semiconductor companies do not need financial support: “TSMC, I did not give them money. All I said was, if you do not build your plant here, you will pay a high tax.” The amount of this tax was apparently supposed to reach 100% in case of disobedience by the Taiwanese company. In March, however, TSMC announced its intention to spend another $100 billion to build three new silicon wafer processing plants and two chip packaging plants in the United States. Even under Biden, the Taiwanese company agreed to spend $65 billion to build three chip manufacturing plants in Arizona.