Locator: 50041APPLE.
The beginning of a very, very long article:
PHOENIX—On a desolate stretch of land dotted with cactuses some 30 minutes north of Phoenix, more than 30 cranes tower over a construction site 2½ times the size of New York City’s Central Park. A mammoth chip-manufacturing facility is rising, along with U.S. hopes of revitalizing a crucial industry.
The plant’s biggest customer is Apple, which is using its enormous purchasing power to help boost American chip production. The company is seeking to diversify its supply chain, score tariff exemptions and answer the call of two presidents to help the U.S. reduce its dependency on foreign suppliers for the foundational technology of the modern economy.
The world’s largest chip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, or TSMC, is building the site, planning to spend $165 billion to build six chip plants and more, making it one of the largest construction projects in the U.S.
Under pressure from the Trump administration, Apple vowed last year to invest $600 billion in the U.S. over four years. Much of that spending isn’t related to manufacturing. It counts all spending in the U.S. including salaries for tens of thousands of Apple employees and retail staff.
But the commitment also includes the more than 100 million chips Apple plans to buy from TSMC Arizona this year, said David Tom, its global head of procurement. “We’re buying as much of the output of this fab as we can,” he said, referring to the fabrication plant.
The effort is modest relative to the global chip supply chain. And Apple’s purchases from the factory represent a small percentage of its total demand for chips, the key components that power its devices.Even so, the scale of construction, at TSMC and other suppliers, shows Apple’s effort to reshore its chip supply chain is bearing fruit. The Wall Street Journal toured the desert southwest with Apple executives to see facilities that its purchasing heft and investments are helping to build.
(News Corp, owner of the Journal, has a commercial agreement to supply news through Apple services.)
