Taiwan President, TSMC Chair Discuss Chipmaker's Recent U.S. Investment

TaiwanPlus News

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te gave his first comments after chip giant TSMC announced a US$100 billion investment in the United States, saying Taipei received no pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration.

Transcript

00:00We begin today with some breaking news. Taiwan President Lai Ching-de is supporting chip

00:05giant TSMC's unprecedented US$100bn investment in the United States. It's the single largest

00:13foreign direct investment in US history. Lai spoke alongside TSMC Chair C.C. Wei at the

00:19Presidential Office, where reporter Chris Goran now joins us live. Chris, what exactly

00:25did Lai say?

00:29I think President Lai wanted to make one thing very clear, which is that Taiwan supports

00:35and will not stand in the way of TSMC's massive investment into the United States. Those sentiments

00:42were largely echoed by TSMC Chair C.C. Wei, who actually gave the majority of the comments

00:50at this press conference. He really emphasized that the goal behind this new investment was

00:56simply to service its largest customers in the United States. This is also the first

01:06time that President Lai has actually spoken publicly about these new investments in the

01:12United States since they were announced at the White House two days ago. Just to remind

01:16our viewers, what was announced two days ago was an additional US$100bn of investment in

01:23the United States. That's in addition to the US$65bn that had already been announced

01:28a few years ago. That will be for a total of six advanced chip factories, two advanced

01:34packaging centers, and one R&D center in the US state of Arizona. That's six factories

01:41in addition to the three that had already been planned there.

01:44This announcement also comes despite the fact that Donald Trump recently stated that he

01:49would seek to repeal the US Chips Act. That act would actually provide more than US$11bn

01:57in subsidies and low interest loans to TSMC to build their Arizona facilities. TSMC Chair

02:04C.C. Wei was actually asked about that in the press conference, and here's what he had

02:08to say.

02:37You can hear in that last bite from President Lai that he is trying to assure people that

02:42this newly announced investment did not come from any pressure on the United States side

02:49on TSMC or on Taiwan. I think he's trying to reassure people about that because since

02:58President Trump has taken office, he's been using all of America's economic pressure to

03:03try and get economic concessions from partner countries all across the world. Here today,

03:10both Wei and Lai seem to be using language that was much more friendly, calling this

03:16a watershed moment in Taiwan and US relations, and saying that this is going to be the new

03:24way forward. I think as far as TSMC is concerned, they just really wanted to emphasize that

03:31this was nothing more than a business decision to try and help out their most important customer.

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