Potential U.S. semiconductor manufacturing boom complicated by Trump’s economic policies

An Intel chip is displayed during an event called AI Everywhere in New York, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023. Intel is introducing new products that are designed to be used with AI powered computers and applications. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

LOS ANGELES — Before “America First” became the Trump administration’s mandate for foreign policy and trade, one sector was already working to bring business back to the United States: the semiconductor industry.

Aided by government incentives, American and foreign tech companies alike have invested hundreds of billions of dollars to bolstering semiconductor operations — research and development, manufacturing and facility modernization — across the country in recent years.

In few places is the growth of the U.S. semiconductor industry clearer than in the Greater Sacramento region, where tech leaders and lawmakers have, for years, sought to grow California’s role in producing the chips that power everyday necessities like cars, refrigerators and smartphones. Semiconductor giants clustered in cities just outside Silicon Valley — Intel, AMD, Bosch, Samsung and Micron — are building on a tech foothold Intel first established when it opened its Sacramento-County campus in 1984.

But President Donald Trump’s economic policies have complicated that growth as the administration takes its next steps toward imposing more tariffs on key imports and launching investigations into imports of computer chips and chip-making equipment — all at a time when deeper semiconductor investments were just starting to have a positive impact on changing supply chains. New tariffs, paired with the administration’s threats against the CHIPS and Science Act, could dramatically slow its goal of ensuring the U.S. maintains a competitive edge in artificial intelligence development.

“You’re starting to see some of it now. Samsung announced a delay in the fabs in Texas,” said Mario Morales, an analyst with the International Data Corp. “That facility was supposed to come online in 2024 now it’s being delayed to 2028. I think some of these companies are delaying it because they now know that they’re not going to likely get funding, or because of the uncertainty around the acts that we’re seeing around the new trade policy.”

When asked about the delay, Samsung said the Texas site will be ready by 2026.

Although the U.S. is a major producer of certain types of semiconductor chips, the nation’s share of global chip production — measured by volume and not dollar value — fell from 37% in 1990 to just 10% in 2022, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. As a result, the country relies heavily on imports from Taiwan and South Korea for advanced chips.

Major manufacturers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. are investing to build up U.S. facilities, partly due to incentives put in place during former President Joe Biden’s time in office. The CHIPS Act, a law passed in 2022 with bipartisan support, was designed to revive U.S. semiconductor manufacturing while sharpening the U.S. edge in military technology and minimizing future supply chain disruptions.

Because of the CHIPS Act, the U.S. is projected to more than triple its semiconductor manufacturing capacity — the highest rate of growth in the world during that period, according to a May 2024 report from the Semiconductor Industry Association and the Boston Consulting Group.

Barry Broome, president of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council, said weaknesses in the semiconductor supply chain became evident during the pandemic, when the U.S. experienced a shortage in supply. It was “abundantly clear that having these chip products offshore in Vietnam, Taiwan, China for cost savings had serious implications.”

Those pandemic-era challenges, paired with looming tensions between China and Taiwan, have helped drive the industry to the Sacramento area, he said. Northern California’s wealth of tech knowledge and established roots in the semiconductor industry are also attractive traits that have brought investment to the Sacramento region as federal subsidies begin to bolster domestic growth.

German tech company Bosch, for example, announced a $1.9 billion investment in the Greater Sacramento area in 2023 to manufacture chips for electric vehicles, converting its facility in Roseville into a silicon carbide semiconductor production site.

That investment, Bosch said, would create as many as 1,700 jobs in construction, manufacturing, engineering, and research and development. The project marks the largest semiconductor investment in California in three decades, according to Broome.

Tech workers who started out at companies like Intel have spun out companies of their own, including Sacramento-area AI startup Blaize and data storage manufacturer Solidigm.

Dinakar Munagala, cofounder of Blaize, said the company’s AI chips are among the few built domestically. Their chips are made in a Samsung foundry in Texas, he said. The company’s products, Munagala added, help to power systems that analyze traffic patterns and detect suspicious behavior in airports.

“We’re built here,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons we’re actually getting quite a bit of interest from defense, border security, these classes of use cases.”

Lane Bess, board chair of Blaize, pointed to Munagala — who worked at Intel — as an example of the talent the Sacramento region can provide to tech companies. The area is primed to be a main corridor for the semiconductor industry because a lot of skilled workers are looking to develop their own companies, Bess said.

The Trump administration has viewed chip production as a national security issue because it would reduce U.S. reliance on importing chips that are also used by the military. It also intends to study the risks of having computer chip production concentrated in other places and the impact on U.S. competitiveness from foreign government subsidies, “foreign unfair trade practices and state-sponsored overcapacity.”

Alvin Nguyen, senior analyst at Forrester, said the fluidity of the state of administration’s tariffs will cause confusion about the impact on the supply chain “due to the complexity of tracking where materials and manufactured goods are produced and assembled.”

Video game companies, for example, have started to raise prices amid a backdrop of ongoing tariff uncertainty.

“For semiconductors, we may see certain goods no longer making sense to produce due to the cost — see Nintendo Switch 2 — and the value seen from IT purchases diminishing,” he said in an email.

Preorders for Nintendo’s highly anticipated Switch 2 were delayed in April as retailers assessed the potential impact of tariffs. Nintendo later confirmed that some Switch 2 accessories would see price adjustments, but maintained that its baseline price for the console — $449.99 — would remain the same.

Nguyen said that in the medium term, the growth of foundries around the world will be beneficial to easing dependence on Taiwan for chip production. Down the road, “we should see a healthier global ecosystem for semiconductor manufacturing and more supply chain options in where chips are produced and can be procured,” he said.

Broome, of the economic council, said he believes the Trump administration’s tariffs are aimed at restructuring global relationships. He said he hopes that “concludes quickly” because uncertainty over trade policy doesn’t favor the markets.

“If the tariffs are used for leverage to get better agreements in the next two or three months, then we’ll come back quickly, and will benefit from it,” Broome said. “If they’re considered long-term policy, I think it’ll really ice the capital markets from putting real money on the table.”

Sarah Parvini, The Associated Press