Former President Trump reiterated his frustrations with Taiwan, accusing the country of stealing America's chip sectorNvidia and every hyperscaler depend on Taiwan's chips to build AI modelsFormer president Donald Trump reiterated his frustration with Taiwan over the weekend when he appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast and accused the country of stealing America's chip industry.
Intel, which has emerged as a poster child for the U.S. CHIPS Act, has faced many challenges."We want to get leading edge infrastructure built here in the U.S., and to be honest, from a policy standpoint, it really shouldn't matter all that much who is building it," Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon told CNBC.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is on tap to receive nearly $7 billion from the U.S. Commerce Department to build its Arizona foundry as part of the CHIPS Act.
Trump also suggested foreign companies shouldn't be able to enter the U.S. and use government money."That chip deal is so bad," he said."We put up billions of dollars for rich companies to come in and borrow the money and build chip companies here. They're not going to give us the good companies anyway."
Markets have been keeping a close eye on the risk surrounding Taiwan, given how dependent Silicon Valley is on TSMC's chips. Earlier this summer, when Trump made similar comments about Taiwan, the SMH ETF lost $675 billion in market cap in one week. TSMC fell over 10%.