特朗普的經濟政策令美國半導體製造業繁榮前景變得複雜 (2/2)

Recently Yahoo News on-line picked up the following:

Potential US semiconductor manufacturing boom complicated by Trump's economic policies (2/2)

The Associated Press - Sarah Parvini

Wed, May 21, 2025 at 7:15 a.m. PDT·6 min read

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German tech company Bosch, for example, announced a $1.9 billion investment in the Greater Sacramento area in 2023 to manufacture chips for electric vehicles, converting its facility in Roseville into a silicon carbide semiconductor production site.

That investment, Bosch said, would create as many as 1,700 jobs in construction, manufacturing, engineering, and research and development. The project marks the largest semiconductor investment in California in three decades, according to Broome.

Tech workers who started out at companies like Intel have spun out companies of their own, including Sacramento-area AI startup Blaize and data storage manufacturer Solidigm.

Dinakar Munagala, cofounder of Blaize, said the company’s AI chips are among the few built domestically. Their chips are made in a Samsung foundry in Texas, he said. The company’s products, Munagala added, help to power systems that analyze traffic patterns and detect suspicious behavior in airports.

“We’re built here,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons we’re actually getting quite a bit of interest from defense, border security, these classes of use cases.”

Lane Bess, board chair of Blaize, pointed to Munagala — who worked at Intel — as an example of the talent the Sacramento region can provide to tech companies. The area is primed to be a main corridor for the semiconductor industry because a lot of skilled workers are looking to develop their own companies, Bess said.

The Trump administration has viewed chip production as a national security issue because it would reduce U.S. reliance on importing chips that are also used by the military. It also intends to study the risks of having computer chip production concentrated in other places and the impact on U.S. competitiveness from foreign government subsidies, “foreign unfair trade practices and state-sponsored overcapacity.”

Alvin Nguyen, senior analyst at Forrester, said the fluidity of the state of administration's tariffs will cause confusion about the impact on the supply chain “due to the complexity of tracking where materials and manufactured goods are produced and assembled.”

Video game companies, for example, have started to raise prices amid a backdrop of ongoing tariff uncertainty.

“For semiconductors, we may see certain goods no longer making sense to produce due to the cost — see Nintendo Switch 2 — and the value seen from IT purchases diminishing,” he said in an email.

Preorders for Nintendo’s highly anticipated Switch 2 were delayed in April as retailers assessed the potential impact of tariffs. Nintendo later confirmed that some Switch 2 accessories would see price adjustments, but maintained that its baseline price for the console — $449.99 — would remain the same.

Nguyen said that in the medium term, the growth of foundries around the world will be beneficial to easing dependence on Taiwan for chip production. Down the road, “we should see a healthier global ecosystem for semiconductor manufacturing and more supply chain options in where chips are produced and can be procured,” he said.

Broome, of the economic council, said he believes the Trump administration's tariffs are aimed at restructuring global relationships. He said he hopes that “concludes quickly” because uncertainty over trade policy doesn’t favor the markets.

“If the tariffs are used for leverage to get better agreements in the next two or three months, then we’ll come back quickly, and will benefit from it,” Broome said. “If they’re considered long-term policy, I think it’ll really ice the capital markets from putting real money on the table.”

Translation

特朗普的經濟政策令美國半導體製造業繁榮前景變得複雜 (2/2)

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例如，德國科技公司 Bosch 宣布，將於2023年在大薩克拉門托地區投資19億美元，用於生產電動車晶片，並將其位於 Roseville 的工廠改造成碳化矽半導體生產基地。

Bosch 表示，這項投資將在建築、製造、工程和研發領域創造多達1,700個就業機會。據 Broome 稱，該項目是加州30年來最大的半導體投資項目。

在英特爾等公司起步的科技工作者, 紛紛創立自己的公司，包括薩克拉門托地區的人工智能新創公司  Blaize 和資料儲存製造商nSolidigm。

Blaize 聯合創始人 Dinakar Munagala 表示，該公司的 AI 晶片是少數在本土生產的晶片之一。他表示，他們的晶片是在德州的三星代工廠生產的。 Munagala 補充說，該公司的產品確保處理機場交通模式分析, 和檢測可疑行為系統的正常運作。

他說: “我們在這裡紮根”; “這也是我們受到國防、邊境安全這些類型的用例廣泛關注的原因之一。”

Blaize 董事會主席 Lane Bess 以曾在英特爾工作的 Munagala 為例，說明了薩克拉門托地區可以為科技公司提供人才。 Bess 表示，該地區有望成為半導體產業的主要走廊，因為許多技術工人正在尋求發展自己的公司。

特朗普政府將晶片生產視為國家安全問題，因為這將減少美國對進口晶片的依賴，而這些晶片也用於軍方。政府還計劃研究將電腦晶片生產集中在其他地方的風險，以及研究由於有外國政府補貼、「外國不公平貿易行為和政府支持的產能過剩」而對美國競爭力的影響。

Forrester 高級分析師 Alvin Nguyen 表示， “由於去追蹤材料和製成品的生產和組裝地點的複雜性”，政府關稅政策的迅速變化將導致人們對對供應鏈的影響感到混亂。

例如，在持續的關稅不確定性背景下，電子遊戲公司已開始提價。

Nguyen 在一封電子郵件中表示：“在半導體方面，我們可能會看到某些產品由於成本原因而不再被生產 - 例如任天堂 Switch 2 - 以及由於從資訊科技採購中看到的價值下降。”

由於零售商評估了關稅的潛在影響，任天堂備受期待的 Switch 2 的預訂在 4 月被推遲。任天堂後來證實，部分 Switch 2 配件將進行價格調整，但堅稱其主機的基準價格（449.99 美元）將保持不變。

Nguyen 表示，從中期來看，全球晶圓代工廠的成長將有助於緩解對台灣晶片生產的依賴。未來，他說:「我們應該看到一個更健康的全球半導體製造生態系統，以及更多在晶片生產上和採購上的供應鏈選擇」。

經濟委員會的 Broome 表示，他認為特朗普政府的關稅旨在重塑全球關係。他表示，希望這一舉措 “能夠迅速達成”，因為貿易政策的不確定性不利於市場。

Broome 說: 「如果關稅被用作籌碼，在未來兩三個月內達成更好的協議，那麼我們就能迅速復完，並從中受益」; 「如果這些政策被視為一項長期政策，我認為它將真的會阻止資本市場有真金白銀注入」。

              So, although the U.S. is a major producer of certain types of semiconductor chips, the nation's share of global chip production — measured by volume and not dollar value — fell from 37% in 1990 to just 10% in 2022. As a result, the country relies heavily on imports from Taiwan and South Korea for advanced chips. The Trump administration has viewed chip production as a national security issue. Apparently, the Trump administration's tariffs are aimed at restructuring global relationships.