Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Fortunately that’s the case for the Intel computer chip fabrication plant currently under construction in suburban Columbus.
Multiple financial media reports say Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the market leader in the chip fab industry, is set to finalize a joint venture with Intel that would put TSMC in the leadership role at the Ohio facility.
The plant announced with great fanfare by former President Joe Biden and every Ohio statewide elected official and economic development professional as the birth of the “silicon heartland” was supposed to open later this year, employing thousands at six-figure salaries.
Instead, Intel’s inability to match TSMC quality standards and falling market share caused financial strains that delayed the Ohio plant until 2031. Intel has spent too much to pull the plug on the Columbus project but is too financially weak to proceed as planned.
TSMC is flush with cash and needs to protect itself from the vulnerability to an invasion of Taiwan by Communist China. Xi Jinping has promised to reunite Taiwan and mainland China, by military force if necessary, and the war games practicing invasion are at the very least extremely intimidating.
Investing in U.S. manufacturing facilities protects TSMC from the cost of tariffs. TSMC is investing more than $100 billion to build its own chip plants in the United States, and the deal with Intel would give them access to plants in Ohio, Arizona, Oregon, and New Mexico.
The Intel Ohio facility was envisioned to become a five-plant production site creating more than 10,000 manufacturing jobs and 20,000 construction jobs from a $100 billion investment.
TSMC is far more likely to deliver on that potential than Intel alone, and it’s easier and faster to expand at a site already established following a set plan than it is to start new somewhere else.
For Toledo the bypass around the U.S. 23 bottleneck in Delaware County with a free-flow highway connection to I-71 into Columbus becomes more important than ever.
Northwest Ohio businesses need viable commercial access to Columbus to be part of the TSMC-Intel supply chain.
Because the auto industry is a huge consumer of semiconductor chips the Columbus fabrication plant is best served by a highway that connects most quickly to the buyers in Detroit and Toledo.
The coming move to autonomous, or self-driving cars, requires massive investment in advanced computing.
The chips made in Columbus will be delivered to auto plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Canada most efficiently via a free-flow highway to Toledo.
It’s imperative for economic competitiveness that Ohio go quickly from the plan for a U.S. 23 bypass due in October to construction of the bypass so as to coincide with the new momentum in Columbus technology manufacturing created by the presence of TSMC.
First Published April 9, 2025, 4:00 a.m.
