In July, I sat among roughly 100 people in a packed conference room in Taipei as a speaker highlighted the industrial parks and tax rates of an American city nearly 7,000 miles away.
“There are ribbon-cutting ceremonies almost every week. Everywhere you look, something is being built. This trend will continue for the next 20 to 30 years.”
Steve Hsu, head of the Arizona Commerce Authority’s Taiwan office, was pitching real estate opportunities in Phoenix — the desert city that is undergoing a huge economic transformation known as the “TSMC effect.”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s leading chipmaker, had announced its plans to construct fabrication plants in Arizona in 2020. Today, the expanding TSMC project in the state represents the largest single foreign investment project in U.S. history.
As Arizona’s economic fortunes have become increasingly tied to TSMC and its chip supply chain, it’s been keen to diversify the roster of investors beyond tech companies.
