Archive: https://archive.is/20250325212638/https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Tech-Asia/TSMC-s-165bn-U.S.-expansion-push-Inevitable-but-risky

TAIPEI -- When TSMC Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei stood next to U.S. President Donald Trump early this month and announced the world's biggest chipmaker would be investing an additional $100 billion to build five more advanced chip facilities and an R&D center on American soil, many back home in Taiwan were worried about what it would mean economically and politically for the island.

Taiwan has long taken a measure of comfort in its "Silicon shield," the idea that its chip economy -- the second largest in the world -- makes it too important for the U.S. not to defend it should China ever invade.

But the U.S. is now home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s first cutting-edge plant overseas, which went into production in Arizona late last year, with some 3,000 employees on site. The chip titan is now busy installing clean room facilities at a second, more advanced plant in the state that will start pilot production by next year. And -- Nikkei Asia can report for the first time -- construction on a third Arizona plant is slated to begin this year.