You’d be surprised at how many fabs there are in the US.
- TI has something like a half dozen to a dozen, predominantly in Texas
- Intel has more fabs than you can shake a stick at, mostly in Oregon but also Arizona
- Samsung has a fab in Texas
- GlobalFoundries exists in New York and Vermont
- Micron is in Idaho
- Wolfspeed has power electronics fabs in North Carolina and New York
And so on. The US has a lot of fabs. For best countries in the world to build a new fab, the US would rank somewhere between first and third place — and I think there’s a strong argument for the answer being “first place.” Unlike Taiwan and South Korea, US fab jobs and experience are not almost entirely dominated by one or two companies. The US isn’t located in one of the most geopolitically risky parts of the developed world. The US has a huge population and plenty of money to put into fab expansion.
The only issues here are (a) the US has gotten worse and worse at large scale construction projects, and (b) TSMC wants to pay workers like shit and treat them even worse, which doesn’t fly for technically skilled US workers. You can treat US technical workers workers poorly, but not as poorly as in much of Asia, and you definitely cannot do it without paying them very well.
MaybeItWorks@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Um, hard disagree. It makes a lot of sense if we don’t want to entirely be dependent on China for silicon production. Gets a little fuzzy because this is a foreign company, but the plant is still on US soil. We need to make semi-conductors in the US or we can never maintain independence from China. Our dependency on China still may be too far gone, but this is at least an attempt to remain independent from arguably our largest world adversary. Remember how the world’s hardware supply chain slowed to a molasses pace because of COVID? That’s why it’s smart to build in the US.