Apple chipmaker TSMC had already said that it would build a total of eight plants in Arizona, and has now announced an investment boost that could see that number increased to 12.

This could potentially see more chips for Apple devices made in the US, but there are reasons to be skeptical about this possibility …

It’s almost exactly a year to the day since TSMC said that it would be accelerating the construction of its second and third Arizona plants. Apple was slated to be the first customer of that third facility.

Some had expressed skepticism about how meaningful US chip production would be for Apple devices. That’s in part because TSMC deliberately restricts its most advanced processes to fabrication plants in its own home country of Taiwan. It would be impossible to make chips for the latest Apple devices using any of the planned US plants.

That means only chips for older Apple devices could be made, typically those around three generations old. Even there, there was skepticism as the raw chips are only one step in the process. Apple’s chips are really clusters of several different chips brought together in a process known as “packaging,” and the original plan was for US-made chips to be shipped back to Taiwan for this.

This led to one analyst describing the Arizona plant as a “paperweight.” There was brief talk of using a third-party US company to do the packaging, before TSMC said it would create its own chip-packaging facilities in the US.

Since then, the total number of planned US plants had grown to eight.

The Trump administration has now announced that TSMC has agreed to invest an additional $100 billion in US facilities. It claims this will result in a total of 12 Arizona plants – though this includes packaging as well as chipmaking facilities.

Today, the White House and the Department of Commerce announced an incremental $100 billion investment by TSMC for advanced semiconductor manufacturing and packaging facilities in Arizona. With the additional facilities, TSMC’s $265 billion investment will provide a total of 12 facilities in the United States.

The picture painted by the company itself, however, is somewhat different. BBC News reports that TSMC has said only that its increased investment would “likely” see four new plants, and absolutely no timings have been announced.

Chief executive CC Wei [said] the increase will likely see four new plants built in Arizona […] Wei did not give a timeline of when the new plants were likely to be built, saying only that it would depend on the “market situation”. 

Apple is also seeking to work with other chip makers like Intel and Samsung, which could further affect the “market situation” cited by TSMC as a rider to the announcement.

In other words, this has all the hallmarks of a political announcement: claiming a headline for something that may or may not happen on a timescale that has not been announced.

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