On Tuesday, President Donald Trump claimed to have warned the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which has promised to construct fresh production facilities in the US, that it would be subject to a tax of up to 100% if it chose not to do so.

Trump said semiconductor businesses are not entitled to the $6.6 billion grant that former Biden, then-president, gave to TSMC’s U.S. component for semiconductor production in Phoenix, Arizona, while he participated in a Republican National Congressional Committee event. Recently, TSMC got fined $1 billion or more in a US investigation. 

Trump stated that

“TSMC, I gave them no money … all I did was say, if you don’t build your plant here, you’re going to pay a big tax,”

The largest contract chipmaker, TSMC, said at the White House in March that it will invest an extra $100 billion in the United States, which would entail the construction of five more chip plants over the next few years.

According to Reuters on the same Tuesday, the chipmaker may have to pay a fine of at least $1 billion to resolve a U.S. export monitoring inquiry into a chip it manufactured that was found to be a part of an AI processor manufactured by Huawei Technologies.