With announcements from TSMC, Apple, and other chip manufacturers, has any of it been announced to be steered toward Oregon or Portland?
The Oregonian recently published this piece about the rapidly failing semiconductor industry:
Chipmakers are shedding jobs across the Portland area. Intel is adrift amid falling sales, technological lapses and a leadership vacuum at the top. The company is openly contemplating a corporate breakup and hasn’t had a permanent CEO since early December.
....
Gov. Tina Kotek prepared to designate 373 acres of farmland near Hillsboro for the [National Semiconductor Research Center], a politically contentious decision that would only pay off if the Commerce Department came through for Oregon.
Ultimately, though, the Biden administration snubbed Oregon and awarded the research centers to New York, California and Arizona instead. Kotek quietly withdrew the industrial land designation shortly after Christmas.
...
One person close to the negotiations, who wasn’t authorized to speak about them, said the Biden administration made a specific proposal to Intel for an Oregon site early last fall. That person said Intel declined the proposal because its vision for the research hub differed from the administration’s. As a result, the person said, the Commerce Department moved on to alternatives.
Another person directly involved in negotiations, who also declined to be named while discussing the private talks, said Intel came across as arrogant in its dealings with government leaders, and that the company’s financial and technological setbacks made the Biden administration wary of committing too many CHIPS Act resources to Intel.
Even with the Biden Admin handing out free money to cronies through the Chips Act, we got just $2 billion out of $8 billion given to Intel, out of a $39 billion dollar program subsidizing manufacturing sites in the US. Read carefully how The Oregonian got two anonymous statements about the negotiations that blamed the failure on Intel instead of the government of Oregon. Somehow both statements read from the insider perspective of a person working in government - both were clearly government stooges defending the actions of the DPO and Biden Administration who royally fucked this for Oregon, while retroactively passing anonymous blame onto Intel. It's also interesting to me that this federally funded research facility is somehow seen as a subsidiary of Intel --- I'm genuinely baffled how they're the sole representative. What exactly was this research center going to be if only one private company gets to steer it's direction?
Under the new administration the tariffs have sparked massive investment in domestic semiconductor manufacturing. For example Apple put out a press release:
As Apple brings Apple Intelligence to customers across the U.S., it also plans to continue expanding data center capacity in North Carolina, Iowa, Oregon, Arizona, and Nevada.
Apple’s suppliers already manufacture silicon in 24 factories across 12 states, including Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Utah. The company’s investments in the sector help create thousands of high-paying jobs across the country at U.S. companies like Broadcom, Texas Instruments, Skyworks, and Qorvo.
Is any of this specifically being invested in Oregon? It's unclear, if anyone has info I'd be interested.
And TSMC put out a press release:
https://pr.tsmc.com/english/news/3210
TSMC today announced its intention to expand its investment in advanced semiconductor manufacturing in the United States by an additional $100 billion. Building on the company’s ongoing $65 billion investment in its advanced semiconductor manufacturing operations in Phoenix, Arizona, TSMC’s total investment in the U.S. is expected to reach US$165 billion. The expansion includes plans for three new fabrication plants, two advanced packaging facilities and a major R&D team center, solidifying this project as the largest single foreign direct investment in U.S. history.
It is also expected to drive more than $200 billion of indirect economic output in Arizona and across the United States in the next decade.
TSMC operates a fab in Camas, Washington,
Camas is a suburb of Portland, but based upon the press release there's no indication any of this money will be going to Camas.
Back in 2022 The Oregonian did a profile of this manufacturing facility, noting that the original plan in 1998 was to have a 260-acre hub, but that scale never materialized.
TSMC’s expansion into Camas a quarter century ago was supposed to be a milestone for the company, and for the region. Instead, it became a morass.
WaferTech [aka TSMC] costs in Camas — which he mistakenly described as being in Oregon during the interview — were 50% higher than in Taiwan, Chang said. And despite the large cluster of chip manufacturers in the Portland area, Chang said WaferTech struggled to staff the factory.
While WaferTech continues to operate its single factory and remains profitable, Chang said it never made sense to expand in Camas because TSMC could get more for its money elsewhere.
“We still have about a thousand workers in that factory, and that factory, they cost us about 50% more than Taiwan costs,” Chang said.
Perhaps under the new administration, with these new tariffs, TSMC will see some of that 260-acre plant come into development. Here's an interesting note in The Oregonian article:
TSMC is hedging its own bets, committing billions of dollars to build its own factories in Arizona. Chang said that new Arizona site may do better than WaferTech simply because it’s larger and more economical.
But he also indicated that the company’s decision to build there was “at the urging of the U.S. government” rather than for purely business reasons.
What made Phoenix such a more attractive investment opportunity to the Biden administration than Oregon? Is Kotek, Brown, and Wyden just radioactive to the national Democrats?
And if it was the Biden administration steering investments for TSMC, purposefully pushing investments away from Oregon, it seems unlikely things will get better with the new administration.
Last night there was an announcement of trying to bring ship building back to the United States. Portland and Coos Bay have the ability to do this, but I sincerely doubt anyone in Oregon is taking meetings at the White House to steer that money toward us.