The U.S. commerce secretary is pressuring TSMC and other Taiwanese chip foundries to play a bigger role in helping American carmakers deal with a global shortage of automotive semiconductors that has led to layoffs for many workers in the American auto industry.

“We’re working hard to see if we can get the Taiwanese and TSMC, which is a big company there, to prioritize the needs of our auto companies since there’s so many American jobs on the line,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Tuesday at an Americas Society event, according to Reuters.

Raimondo stressed that “the medium- and long-term solution, though, is like very simply making more chips in America.”

The commerce secretary’s remarks came a day after Reuters reported that TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, was planning to build several more chipmaking plants in the U.S. state of Arizona. In May 2020, TSMC said that it would build a $12 billion factory to produce its advanced 5-nanometer chips in the state with construction set to start some time in 2021, in line with the former Trump administration’s call to bring global tech supply chains back to the U.S.

Last week, Ford warned that the chip shortage might force it to halve its production capacity in the second quarter, according to Reuters.

In an interview with Caixin in April, Xu Daquan, the China executive vice president of leading global auto components supplier Bosch Group, said that the car chip shortage would start to ease in the second half of this year if TSMC could meet global demand from the auto sector.

Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com)

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