Alphonse Chan on the U.S. push to onshore high end semiconductor manufacturing

Q: The United States has also taken a number of steps to insulate itself from the risk of Taiwan being attacked or some kind of disruption abroad by bringing chip manufacturing home to the United States.  How has that been going?

Alphonse Chan: Well, it's the United States and other countries in Europe and Japan as well.  They are all trying to secure their chip supply by again onshoring, as you mentioned.  And I'd say so far that has not led to chip production in the United States as of today.  Manufacturing chips is a hugely complex process and you simply can't throw up a factory with cinder blocks.  These are actually engineering marvels of the world.  And Taiwan Semiconductor has had trouble, number one building these facilities in Arizona and staffing them, and they continue to have labor issues today.  When this [the CHIPS Act] was announced it was thought that that would bring leading edge chips manufacturing to the U.S. and that might be a nice political statement, but by the time these facilities are up and running, those chips will no longer be leading edge.

~ Alphonse Chan, Jr., "Taiwan, Semiconductors, and the Global Economy - Silvercrest," 8:40 mark, June 18, 2024