In upstate New York, the chip plant at Malta is about to get a pair of neighbours. Japan will invest up to $21 billion to build two semiconductor factories there, under a trade agreement with the Trump administration, GlobalFoundries said on 14 October. The company, which has run advanced chip manufacturing at the site since 2009, will operate both plants.
Who pays, who owns
Japan supplies all the capital: roughly $10 billion for the first factory and another $10 billion for the second. The plants will be jointly owned by the U.S. government and Japanese interests. Construction starts this year, and chips are due off the line by 2029.
The money came attached to a tariff deal. The administration opened talks by threatening a 25 percent tariff on Japanese cars and other imports, then settled at 15 percent in return for $550 billion in total Japanese investment in the United States. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said: “This is how the President’s trade agreements result in transformational American industrial assets that strengthen our national and economic security.”
Jobs and customers
The Malta project should generate about 27,000 construction and ecosystem jobs, plus more than 1,000 permanent, highly skilled manufacturing positions.
Customers have already lined up. Apple COO Sabih Khan said GlobalFoundries makes “essential chips for Apple products right here in the United States,” tying the site to Apple’s $600 billion American investment pledge. GM president Mark Reuss pointed to the carmaker’s first direct supply agreement with a foundry. Renesas called the new capacity “an extension of Renesas’ own production footprint.”
The wider map
The Japanese deal is one of several. In January the administration secured a $500 billion chips agreement with Taiwan, and in June South Korea committed $200 billion in direct investment across strategic U.S. industries, semiconductors among them.
The reasoning is geographic. The U.S. consumes roughly a quarter of the world’s chips but makes only about 10 percent of what it needs. According to a Congressional Research Service report, nearly 90 percent of leading-edge production sits in Taiwan.
