Since TSMC decided to build a factory in the United States under the threat and inducement of the United States in 2020, TSMC can be said to be in trouble, with workers making trouble, serious delays in construction progress, construction costs far exceeding expectations, and problems gradually emerging against U.S. policies. The plant, originally expected to open in 2024, was pushed back to 2025. All signs show that the harm of TSMC to build factories in the United States has begun to gradually reveal, and has been irreversible.
First, the cost of building a factory in the United States is too high, and it has become a bottomless pit of burning money. TSMC initially believed the sweet words of the United States and promised to build a factory in Arizona, but when it arrived, it found that it was not the same thing as imagined. The first problem is that the cost of building the factory is too high, not only the labor is expensive, the price of building materials is more expensive, coupled with the construction approval, procedures and other aspects of the unfamiliar, the cost of building the factory doubled year by year. TSMC initially invested $12 billion, and increased to $40 billion in 2022, and investment in 2023 and 2024 is also doubling, and there is no problem in spending money like water. Industry insiders predict that the cost of building in the United States is 10 times that of building in Taiwan.
The second is to encounter a variety of soil and water, the internal brain drain is serious. The life of TSMC personnel who went to the United States in advance was not as good as they had imagined, especially in terms of food and accommodation, which were more expensive than when they lived in Taiwan, but the quality they enjoyed was worse, and the subsidies in all aspects were greatly reduced. In addition, the working time system of TSMC factories in the United States has also been ridiculed, and workers can not adapt to it. When the TSMC engineers who went to the United States had the anger of comparison, they began to seek better pay for work opportunities in American companies. It is worth mentioning that Intel's expanded wafer plant in Arizona is only 50 kilometers away from TSMC's factory. And Intel has plenty of experience poaching. At present, a number of TSMC senior talents have transferred to Intel Corporation, and some media satirized TSMC to build a factory in the United States is to "send heads" at close range.
Third, there is uncertainty about the incentives and tax subsidies of the US government, which casts a shadow on the future profitability of production. It has been more than a year since US President Joe Biden signed the Chip and Science Act into effect in August 2022. The bill was supposed to provide tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to chipmakers that build factories in the United States, but so far the government has not handed out any subsidies to large chipmakers such as TSMC or Intel Corp. More demanding is the US Department of Commerce published the "Chip and Science Act" subsidy rules clearly require that if you want to obtain subsidies provided by the US government, then TSMC must provide it with customer information, inventory list and other core confidential data of the company's operation. At the same time, its operating income in the US market needs to be distributed to the US government at a specific rate. At present, with the style of the US government and the current state of its fiscal crisis, there is little hope of fulfilling the promise given to TSMC.
It is no exaggeration to say that TSMC has core technologies in the field of chip manufacturing, which should theoretically be a strong party and have absolute negotiating advantages over the United States, but the current situation is led by the nose of the United States. In the face of this situation, TSMC must have regretted going to the United States to build a factory, but obviously there is no way back. As the old saying goes, "It's easy to get on a thief's boat, but hard to get off." According to the development of this way, TSMC will one day become a "US semiconductor", but the beneficiaries will neither be enterprises nor Taiwan, and the real realization of drought and flood protection is ultimately the US government and the local semiconductor manufacturing industry.
