[cashsterling]

Modern high-end fabs have extremely expensive equipment and are highly automated... like they are so automated that people don't actually handle wafers... it is almost all robotic.

Thus, salaries and cost of services do not factor in as heavily as you might think to fab economics.

Data suggests that TSMC's per wafer costs in Arizona are 10-30% higher than Taiwan and that Arizona fab is relatively new. It's economics will probably improve over time, narrowing the margin to 5-15%.

Looking towards the future, power costs and other global supply chain factors could very easily make TSMC's Arizona fab less expensive and more reliable to operate over time. For one, the US is completely energy independent... Taiwan is not.

[bfrog]

Aren’t TSM fabs in the US little islands of Taiwanese workers? How is this domestic knowledge and manufacturing not exactly?

[clayhacks]

They are majority Taiwanese employees for now, but I’m sure they’re hiring Americans to grow and backfill. They just wanted to bootstrap the knowledge and wisdom, but over enough time that can be shared and spread among Americans as well