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Biden Admin Announces Billions In Funding For Major Chip Maker As Construction Stalls

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Will Kessler Contributor
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The Biden administration announced Monday that it had reached a preliminary deal with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) over billions in funding toward semiconductor fabrication plants in Phoenix, Arizona.

Around $6.6 billion in direct funding and $5 billion in loans through the CHIPS and Science Act will go toward building three semiconductor fabrication plants, costing more than $65 billion, according to an announcement from the Commerce Department. Top chipmakers, including TSMC and Intel, have had to delay plans to construct chip fabrication plants amid funding uncertainty and difficulties in the semiconductor market. (RELATED: Biden’s Electric Vehicle ‘Mandate’ Might Just Be A Surprise Gift To China)

“One of the key goals of President Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act was to bring the most advanced chip manufacturing in the world to the U.S., and with this announcement and TSMC’s increased investment in their Arizona campus, we are working to achieve that goal,” Gina Raimondo, secretary of Commerce, said in the announcement. “The leading-edge semiconductors that will be made here in Arizona are foundational to the technology that will define global economic and national security in the 21st century, including AI and high-performance computing.”

TSMC first began negotiations with the Biden administration over the funds more than a year and a half ago, delaying the start of the project, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The first plant is not expected to open until the first half of 2025, while the second and third plants are expected by 2028 and the end of the decade, respectively, according to a release from TSMC. The CHIPS and Science Act was signed by President Joe Biden in August 2022.

The project is expected to create around 6,000 manufacturing jobs at the plants and require around 20,000 temporary construction jobs to build, according to the Commerce Department.

“The CHIPS and Science Act provides TSMC the opportunity to make this unprecedented investment and to offer our foundry service of the most advanced manufacturing technologies in the United States,” Mark Liu, chairman of TSMC, said in the release. “Our U.S. operations allow us to better support our U.S. customers, which include several of the world’s leading technology companies. Our U.S. operations will also expand our capability to trailblaze future advancements in semiconductor technology.”

The Biden administration announced in March that it would be granting $8.5 billion in direct funding to Intel to build a campus in Arizona, in addition to $11 billion in loans.

TSMC and the Commerce Department did not respond to a request to comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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