TSMC boss C.C. Wei stated as much during an earnings call to discuss the company’s latest revenue figures for the first quarter of 2024. Charlie Chan, an analyst with Morgan Stanley, asked about the “ongoing cost challenge” of making chips in the U.S. and whether TSMC is “planning to hike [the] price” for a range of semiconductors in 2025.
“We do encounter some kind of higher cost in the overseas or even recently, the inflation and the electricity. We expect our customers to share some of the higher cost with us, and we already started our discussion with our customers,” Wei said.
“And as I said, for the overseas fab, we want to share our value, which also includes the flexibility of geographic location or something like that. If my customer requests to be in some certain area, then definitely, TSMC and the customer had to share the incremental cost,” Wei added.
“For the first time ever, we will be making at scale the most advanced semiconductor chips on the planet here in the United States of America, by the way, with American workers,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo stated at the time.