Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on the US trying to take chip manufacturing from Taiwan: 'Why can't those be made with robotics in America?'
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- Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the US is going to bring back chip manufacturing from Taiwan.
- President Donald Trump's latest round of reciprocal tariffs do not apply to semiconductors.
- But Lutnick said Trump is "going to deeply study those" and bring production back to the US.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Thursday that the US intends to take chip manufacturing from Taiwan.
Lutnick said in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that while President Donald Trump's latest round of tariffs didn't apply to semiconductors, Trump is still looking at how the US can regain its foothold in chip making.
"Donald Trump's going to deeply study those. And those are going to come later on how to reshore from Taiwan all that semiconductor manufacturing," Lutnick said. "We have to protect ourselves at some point. America has to be able to protect itself."
Lutnick also questioned why the US's electronics are "primarily built in Taiwan."
"It used to be built here. Our policies let Taiwan take it all," Lutnick said.
"We all hold our iPhones, which we love. Why do they have to be made in Taiwan and China? Why can't those be made with robotics in America? And you know what Donald Trump has said? They're going to be made in America," he added.
On Wednesday, Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on all countries with tariffs on US goods. Trump said the tariffs will start at a baseline rate of 10% and affect 185 countries. Taiwan was hit with a reciprocal tariff of 32%.
"April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again," Trump said in his announcement.
While on the campaign trail, Trump said Taiwan had grown wealthy by taking away the US's chip manufacturing business. Taiwan produces 92% of the world's most advanced microchips, per the US-based Semiconductor Industry Association.
"I mean, how stupid are we? They took all of our chip business. They're immensely wealthy." Trump told Bloomberg Businessweek in an interview published in July.
"They took almost 100% of our chip industry, I give them credit. That's because stupid people were running the country. We should have never let that happen," Trump added.
On Thursday, Taiwan President Lai Ching-te wrote in a Facebook post that Trump's reciprocal tariffs were "unreasonable" and did not reflect the "highly complementary and substantive trading relationship between Taiwan and the US." Lai said his government will continue to negotiate with the Trump administration.
The US has long been trying to reduce its dependence on Taiwan for chip manufacturing.
In 2022, President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS Act into law. The bipartisan bill was meant to bolster US chipmaking by channeling billions of dollars in federal funding to the chip industry.
In November, the Biden administration said it had awarded up to $6.6 billion in funding to TSMC to build three chip factories in Phoenix, Arizona.
However, experts told Business Insider that while such initiatives would help to bolster chip making in the US, TSMC will probably continue to make its most advanced chips in Taiwan.
"It's very unlikely that the Taiwanese government would allow TSMC to build its most advanced fabs in the US without a few years' lag," said Chris Miller, the author of "Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology."
"This is Taiwan's most valuable strategic capability. Without it, extracting a US security guarantee or support from the Trump administration goes from hard to impossible," Miller added.
Representatives for Lutnick at the Commerce Department did not respond to a request for comment from BI.