A Signal of Production Line Expansion?
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden said on his election campaign website that he will put Americans into making various important products such as semiconductors. This is part of a U.S. manufacturing revival plan laid out by Biden.
Under the economic slogan "Made in All of America," Biden will make efforts to ensure that more high-tech products are made by American workers at factories in the United States.
Meanwhile, much attention is being paid to whether Samsung Electronics will expand its foundry production line in Austin, Texas. In particular, Samsung Austin Semiconductor (SAS), which mainly produces semiconductor chips for iPhones and iPads, has recently started to hire workers on a large scale, raising speculation that Samsung may expand its foundry in Texas.
SAS started to hire employees in 46 job categories in October. It is quite unusual for a semiconductor company to announce the recruitment of workers in all areas at once, ranging from production and R&D to environmental management and finance.
SAS was launched in 1996 as a company with a production line for memory chips. It switched to the foundry business in August 2012. Samsung Electronics' investment in the affiliate amounted to US$17 billion. In particular, given that large-scale staff hiring took place during two expansions in June 2007 and August 2017, the ongoing recruitment process is seen as a signal of another plant expansion.
In order to keep China in check, Biden is also likely to demand Korea join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Analysts say that South Korean semiconductor makers will also have no choice but to cooperate in any way in the process of reorganizing high-tech industrial supply chains centered on the United States in the early days of Biden's inauguration.
In October, Samsung Electronics held the Foundry Forum for major IT companies specializing in high performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, the internet of things (IoT), and electronic equipment for automobiles. The Korean semiconductor giant focused on introducing innovative technologies in consideration of TSMC’s announcement that it will invest US$12 billion in building a 5-nm chip plant in Arizona in the first half of 2020.
If TSMC starts mass-production of 5-nm products in the United States in 2024, its access to large local customers will be considerably improved. Samsung Electronics cannot help expanding SAS to respond to TSMC’s aggressive move.