US President Donald Trump made a big show with his tariffs in a bid to try and bring more jobs back to the US. In particular, he has called for more semiconductor manufacturing to be done in the US, and has backed various efforts to make that happen. However, what Trump wants and what he might be getting could be very different. A recent report from the Wall Street Journal revealed the behind-the-scenes of Apple chipmaking in the US, and it’s quite an eye-opener.
Apple reveals behind-the-scenes of US chipmaking process
It is quite rare for Apple to be so open about its operations. If anything, this tour that Apple granted WSJ reporter Rolfe Winkler of its US chipmaking process feels like a PR exercise. But still, for the average consumer, it’s a fascinating look behind the curtain.
According to the report, things start at GlobalWafers America. The company takes purified silicon rocks and turns them into 12-inch wafers. These wafers will later be imprinted with trillions of transistors to become the chips that you’ll find in all kinds of electronics these days.
That imprinting process takes place at TSMC’s fab in Arizona. The facility uses EUV lithography machines from ASML that reportedly cost up to $400 million each. After that, the final assembly, test, and packing stage occur in Foxconn’s facility in Houston. At first glance, it sounds like things are progressing quite well, right? However, Winkler’s admission later in the report is telling.
Decades behind, and falling further back
According to Winkler, he notes that while US chipmaking efforts are underway, they’re still years behind Asia. For starters, TSMC’s Arizona facility only makes the A16 chip, which was used in Apple’s iPhone 15 series. The A19 is still being made in Taiwan, and presumably the upcoming rumored 2nm A20 as well.
Also, TSMC’s US facilities won’t be able to scale up to its Taiwan operations for a decade, if not more. And this is assuming that chipmakers in other countries are just sitting idly by. Also, what’s rather revealing is the lack of employment at these facilities. Winkler revealed that these facilities are highly automated. They also do not employ as many people compared to the facilities in Asia.
This means that Trump’s plan to bring jobs back to the US might not be going the way he hoped. If there are jobs to be had, it would only be for highly specialized roles, not blue-collar positions. But even then, it might be tricky. Apple CEO Tim Cook was previously quoted as saying, “In America, you can barely fill a room with tooling engineers. In China, you can fill several football fields.”
That being said, Apple’s efforts aren’t an exercise in futility, nor are they just about appeasing Trump. Given the tension between the US and China and China and Taiwan, it makes good business sense for Apple and other companies to diversify their operations beyond China. And bringing some operations back to the US is a start.
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