[Financial Channel/Comprehensive Report] TSMC announced in May 2020 that it will set up a 5-nanometer factory in Arizona, USA, with an estimated total investment of US$12 billion (approximately NT$337.8 billion), arousing public attention. The current Japanese media pointed out that TSMC’s plan to build a factory in Arizona may be difficult because of the high construction cost and the expansion that was several times the original expected. There are also many issues in the supply chain maintenance to be solved.
Japanese media "Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun" quoted industry related sources, saying that TSMC’s Arizona factory seems to be very hard. It pointed out that although TSMC is currently in the stage of obtaining quotations from industry players, the quotations obtained are likely to be huge compared with Taiwan. It is reported that the construction cost alone is as high as 6 times.
In addition, the local laws and regulations and various controls in the United States are different from those in Taiwan and Japan. TSMC may find it difficult to move the entire supply chain over. In addition, TSMC is also facing problems in the preparation of the supply chain, because for suppliers, the risk of following TSMC to the United States is high. Based on risk considerations, many suppliers are deterred from moving to the United States.
(Google translate —— sorry, didn’t have the bandwidth to translate myself)