Business | Making America fab again

The trouble with MAGA’s chipmaking dreams

TSMC will keep making most of the world’s advanced chips at home for years to come

Workers in the lobby of the TSMC facility in Phoenix, Arizona
Photograph: Getty Images

DURING a recent summit in Paris, J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, declared that the world’s most powerful artificial-intelligence (AI) systems would be developed in America with “American-designed and manufactured chips”. That is a lofty ambition, for although America leads the world when it comes to designing AI chips, it long ago ceded its position as the global centre of chip manufacturing to Taiwan.

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This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Making America fab again”

From the March 1st 2025 edition

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