(Reuters) -President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he told the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which has pledged to build new factories in the United States, it would pay a tax of up to 100% if it did not build its plants in the country.
Speaking at a Republican National Congressional Committee event, Trump criticized former President Joe Biden’s administration for providing a $6.6 billion grant to TSMC’s U.S. unit for semiconductor production in Phoenix, Arizona, saying semiconductor companies do not need the money.
“TSMC, I gave them no money … all I did was say, if you don’t build your plant here, you’re going to pay a big tax,” Trump said.
TSMC declined to comment.
In March, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, said at the White House that it plans to make a fresh $100 billion investment in the U.S. that includes building five additional chip facilities in coming years.
Earlier on Tuesday, Reuters reported the chipmaker could face a penalty of $1 billion or more to settle a U.S. export control investigation over a chip it made that ended up inside a Huawei Technologies AI processor.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Ryan Patrick Jones; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Sonali Paul and Christopher Cushing)
