In recent years, the United States has not only tried every means to impose chip restrictions on us, but also introduced the "Chips Act" to subsidize the local chip industry with $52.7 billion. Subsequently, Europe, Japan, South Korea and other countries have also begun to subsidize.
But what's interesting is that the subsidies of other parties are very smooth, not only the subsidy ratio is large, the procedure is simple, and the key can be quickly put in place, while the chip subsidy in the United States has been twists and turns, Samsung has been directly played recently, and TSMC is not happy.
Semiconductors originated in the United States, so the United States is very leading in chip technology, but as the United States promotes the relocation of manufacturing, chip manufacturing has shifted to eastern Asia, and TSMC and Samsung have seized the opportunity to become global wafer manufacturing giants.
The share of chip manufacturing in the United States has fallen from 37% to less than 10% today, although there are chip giants such as Qualcomm and Nvidia, but manufacturing relies on TSMC, Samsung, etc., and the top five American companies in the world, GF, are only mature processes.
Intel, the veteran chip giant in the United States, has been squeezing toothpaste for many years, and its chip manufacturing technology has lagged behind TSMC and Samsung.
In order to improve local chip manufacturing capacity and further control cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing capacity in its own hands, the US side finally passed the bill in August 2022 after many discussions and votes.
In this bill, the United States will provide $52.7 billion in subsidies over the next five years, of which $39 billion will be subsidized for chip manufacturing.
However, it has been a year and a half since the bill was passed, but the subsidies have been repeatedly postponed, and even TSMC's Japanese factories have been completed, but they have not yet received subsidies, so major companies in the United States have postponed the process of building factories, and Intel even threatened to go elsewhere if they don't give it again.
Seeing that the situation is not good, the US subsidy finally began to be distributed, but at first it only subsidized local chip companies, the first two small chip companies provided $35 million and $162 million respectively, and the third company was $1.5 billion.
The fourth is a U.S. company, providing Intel with up to $8.5 billion in direct subsidies and $11 billion in low-interest loans.
But you can't just give it to your own company, you tried to invite TSMC at the beginning, and promised to give subsidies to others. As a result, the U.S. Department of Commerce and TSMC reached a preliminary agreement to provide $6.6 billion in subsidies and $5 billion in low-interest loans.
At this time, TSMC finally saw hope and was directly happy. However, the US subsidy is not so easy to get, and of course you have to pay a price if you want to take it, so TSMC promised to build a third 2nm factory in the United States and increase the investment by another $25 billion.
Seeing TSMC like this, Samsung was naturally not far behind, and also signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms with the U.S. Department of Commerce, under which the U.S. provided Samsung with $6.4 billion in direct subsidies, and Samsung's investment in the United States rose to $40 billion.
Samsung's original investment in building a factory in the United States was $17 billion, which is equivalent to an additional $23 billion in order to obtain subsidies.
But within a few days, at the first quarter financial report analysis meeting, TSMC lowered its forecast for the growth of the global semiconductor market this year to about 10%, and the growth of the global wafer foundry market was revised down from the original forecast of 20% to 14%-19%.
ASML's first-quarter performance also saw a rare decline, with a decline in new orders for lithography machines, indicating that the situation is not very optimistic.
As a result, Samsung felt that it was being tricked by TSMC, so it followed its statement to expand its investment in the United States, and suddenly TSMC passed on the cold, so Samsung acted quickly to postpone the mass production of the factory in the United States from the end of 2024 to 2026.
That's not all, a piece of news came recently, and foreign media directly said that I'm afraid TSMC won't be happy. According to sources, the U.S. Chip Subsidy Program Office will close the opportunity to apply for subsidies for semiconductor factories or wafer fabs.
The reason is that in the past two years, the number of subsidy applications has been huge, and the amount of subsidies provided by the US side is limited, so the application can only be suspended.
If the news is true, I am afraid that it will be difficult to get the subsidies promised to TSMC and Samsung, after all, the US Department of Commerce has only signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum with them, and there is no guarantee that they will be able to get the subsidies.
It is said that more than 450 companies have applied for chip subsidies, and the amount of subsidies from the United States is far from enough, and the amount promised to the wafer giants is very large, and other wafer factories can hardly share it, so the U.S. Department of Commerce even proposed the second phase of subsidies.
You know, the cost of building a factory and operating in the United States is much higher, if it weren't for the subsidy, I'm afraid many companies wouldn't come. Now, the United States has suspended the application for chip subsidies, and I am afraid that the promised subsidies from TSMC and Samsung are difficult to say!