US President Biden’s top economic and national security advisers are today to host more than a dozen chief executive officers to discuss the administration’s US$2.25 trillion infrastructure plan and the global semiconductor shortage, a White House official said.
US National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan are to host the meeting, while US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo is also to participate.
Companies invited to join the administration officials include General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co, Stellantis NV, Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc, Dell Technologies Inc, Intel Corp, Medtronic PLC, Northrop Grumman Corp, HP Inc, Cummins Inc, Micron Technology Inc, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), AT&T Inc and Samsung Electronics Co.
Photo: Bloomberg
A White House official said that the agenda would include proposals in what Biden calls the “American Jobs Plan” to support the auto industry’s transition to clean energy, the creation of jobs and the preservation of US economic competitiveness.
“The president is deeply committed to ending the silos between domestic and foreign policy — and the semiconductor shortage is a perfect example of an urgent economic and national security priority for the Biden administration,” Sullivan said in a statement. “The shortage is impacting the lives of American workers and families as plants sit idled. And trying to address supply chains on a crisis-by-crisis basis creates critical national security vulnerabilities.”
The Biden administration is in the middle of a 100-day supply-chain review — including for semiconductors — and has called on the US Congress to pass legislation that would fund chips research and development.
The results of the review are not to be made public until June and today’s meeting is to inform the outcome, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Thursday last week.
Intel, Samsung and TSMC have all announced plans to build factories in the US, although none of the companies has started construction and the timeline for production at the new plants would potentially be years away.
Deese said that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed economic vulnerabilities, as well as the importance of robust and reliable supply chains.
“This summit reflects the urgent need to strengthen critical supply chains and strategically position the US economy to lead the 21st century, and we look forward to partnering with our key stakeholders in this effort,” he said in a statement.
TSMC told the Central News Agency on Saturday that it planned to join the meeting, although it did not say which executive would attend.
TSMC on Friday posted a record NT$362.41 billion (US$12.76 billion) in revenue in the first quarter, up 16.7 percent from a year earlier.
The company is to hold an investors’ conference on Thursday to detail its first-quarter financial results, as well as its forecast for the rest of this year, and progress on planned chip fabs in Arizona and Japan.
Additional reporting by CNA
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
Popular vape brands such as Geek Bar might get more expensive in the US — if you can find them at all. Shipments of vapes from China to the US ground to a near halt last month from a year ago, official data showed, hit by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and a crackdown on unauthorized e-cigarettes in the world’s biggest market for smoking alternatives. That includes Geek Bar, a brand of flavored vapes that is not authorized to sell in the US, but which had been widely available due to porous import controls. One retailer, who asked not to be named, because
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
STILL LOADED: Last year’s richest person, Quanta Computer Inc chairman Barry Lam, dropped to second place despite an 8 percent increase in his wealth to US$12.6 billion Staff writer, with CNA Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and Richard Tsai (蔡明興), the brothers who run Fubon Group (富邦集團), topped the Forbes list of Taiwan’s 50 richest people this year, released on Wednesday in New York. The magazine said that a stronger New Taiwan dollar pushed the combined wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people up 13 percent, from US$174 billion to US$197 billion, with 36 of the people on the list seeing their wealth increase. That came as Taiwan’s economy grew 4.6 percent last year, its fastest pace in three years, driven by the strong performance of the semiconductor industry, the magazine said. The Tsai
RSS