U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans Monday night to impose massive tariffs on Taiwan-made chips in an attempt to incentivize companies to relocate production to the United States. On the one hand, this could reduce American companies' reliance on Taiwan in general and TSMC in particular. On the other hand, building a semiconductor fab takes three to four years, so the effect of production moving to the US due to tariffs may not be felt for some time.
"In the very near future, we are going to be placing tariffs on foreign production of computer chips, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals to return production of these essential goods to the United States," Trump told House Republicans conference (via C-Span.org). "They left us and went to Taiwan; we want them to come back. We do not want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous program that Biden has given everybody billions of dollars. They already have billions of dollars. […] They did not need money. They needed an incentive. And the incentive is going to be they [do not want to] pay a 25%, 50% or even a 100% tax."
