Top Trump administration officials have declared a push to dramatically reduce U.S. reliance on advanced semiconductors from Taiwan, with a target of producing up to half of the nation’s supply domestically or in allied countries.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Lutnick said the goal is for 50% of the advanced chips America needs to be made within its own borders. His comments, made in an interview with News Nation this weekend, echoed U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s remarks last week that 30% to 50% of the U.S. supply must be shifted to the U.S. or to allies such as Japan and countries in the Middle East.
The policy drive represents a significant effort by the new administration to reconfigure the global semiconductor supply chain, motivated by national security concerns over Taiwan’s near-monopoly on production. Taiwan currently makes 95% of the world’s most advanced chips.
In the interview, Lutnick acknowledged that convincing Taiwan to accept a reduced market share from 95% to 50% required “a lot of talking.” He said the Trump administration told Taiwanese authorities that the U.S. would provide security protection in exchange for Taiwan’s help in achieving “reasonable self-sufficiency” in chips.
When he took office in January, only 2% of high-end chips used in the U.S. were produced domestically, Lutnick said. He aims to raise that share to 40% or 50% by the end of his four-year term.
Even if Taiwan supplied only 50% of America’s advanced chips, Lutnick argued the U.S. would still be “fundamentally reliant” on Taiwan. However, he added that having a 50% domestic supply would give the U.S. the ability to “do what we need to do,” without specifying what that might entail. He estimated that building a complete domestic supply chain to meet this goal would require a $500 billion investment.
In a separate interview on Fox News, Bessent called the concentration of chip manufacturing in Taiwan the “single greatest point of failure” for the global economy.
“They do a great job, they have a wonderful ecosystem, but in terms of risk management, I don't know whether it's 30, 40, 50% of our needs, we have got to bring back to the U.S. or our allies, whether it's Japan or the Middle East,” he said, adding that the U.S. is working on this “every day.”
