An interview with Jinman Han, the head of Samsung's US chip business, on the pandemic chip shortage, geopolitics, Samsung's $17B fab in Taylor, Texas, and more
Katie Tarasov / CNBC : Tweets: @stshank and @sarthakgh Tweets: Stephen Shankland / @stshank : Samsung re. subsidies to build chipmaking fabs in the US: “The CHIPS Act is helping us to overcome the differences in construction costs that we get out of Asia versus the United States. And there definitely is a difference.” https://www.cnbc.com/... Sar Haribhakti / @sarthakgh : “Samsung got its start 85 years ago, when founder Lee Byung-chull created it as a trading company for exporting fruit, vegetables and fish in Korea.” “...company says its products can be found in nearly three-quarters of U.S. households.” https://www.cnbc.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Jinman Han's interview lands at a pivotal point in Samsung's U.S. buildout: the planned $6B+ CHIPS Act award covers four facilities in Taylor, Texas, anchored by the $17B fab announced earlier. What began as a headline investment has been reshaped by economics — the Taylor project's budget had already swollen past $25B on inflation and material costs before subsidies entered the picture.
The geopolitical layer Han discusses is not abstract for Samsung. The company has been rethinking its China exposure since the Chips and Science Act imposed expansion guardrails, while rival SK Hynix's Dalian NAND plant sits in limbo under U.S.-China export rules. And commercially, Samsung enters this expansion from a weakened foundry position, having reportedly lost Qualcomm and Nvidia business to TSMC.
First-order effects
- Samsung's Taylor expansion now depends on CHIPS Act money to close a stated construction-cost gap between Asia and the United States — without it, the over-budget Texas project becomes harder to justify internally.
- Han's framing gives the Commerce Department public confirmation that subsidy design is working as intended for foreign entrants: Samsung is committing U.S. capacity it might otherwise have placed in Asia.
Second-order effects
- TSMC and Intel, both competing in the same subsidy race the Wall Street Journal documented, face pressure to match Samsung's four-facility Texas commitment with their own accelerated U.S. roadmaps.
- SK Hynix, whose Dalian plant shows how export rules can strand Chinese assets, gains a template in Samsung's approach: shift new capacity to protected Western markets rather than expand existing China operations.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, leading-edge chip capacity consolidates into subsidized regional blocs — U.S., allied Asia — while legacy Chinese plants age out under export-control constraints, effectively splitting the global memory and foundry map along geopolitical lines.
- For Samsung specifically, U.S. fabs double as a trust signal for American customers like Qualcomm and Nvidia, whose orders went to TSMC when Samsung's process technology lagged; proximity and subsidy-backed scale become part of the pitch to win them back.
The trend: Industrial policy is redrawing the geography of leading-edge chipmaking, pulling South Korean giants like Samsung into subsidized U.S. capacity even as export controls freeze their Chinese footprint.