American memory chip maker Micron Technology is to increase its expansion in the United States, amid the onshoring drive and tariff threats of US President Donald Trump.
Micron announced on Thursday it will pump in an extra $30 billion in manufacturing and R&D in the United States, bringing its total investment to $200 billion in its home country.
The American memory maker had in December 2024 been awarded $6.1 billion from the bipartian US Chips and Science Act of 2022 for its Idaho and New York projects. That award was one of the last funding packages from the outgoing Biden administration.
US expansion
But last week Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick admitted that the Trump administration is renegotiating some of former President Joe Biden’s grants to semiconductor firms.
In March 2025 Trump had clearly signalled that the US Chips and Science Act was under directly threat of being axed altogether, when he urged the killing off of President Biden’s US Chips Act during a speech to Congress.
It remains to be seen whether Micron will be impacted, but the firm said on Thursday that the $200 billion US expansion vision will include two leading-edge high-volume fabs in Idaho, and up to four leading-edge high-volume fabs in New York.
In September 2022 Micron had broken ground for a $15 billion memory chip plant in Boise, Idaho, part of its then plan to invest $40bn in US semiconductor manufacturing through the end of the decade.
Then in October 2022 Micron Technology had said it would construct a “sustainably built and operated, leading-edge memory fab in New York.
Now Micron said it is also expanding and modernising its existing manufacturing fab in Virginia, investing in advanced HBM packaging capabilities, and funding R&D “to drive American innovation and technology leadership.”
“These investments are designed to allow Micron to meet growing market demand fueled by AI, maintain share and support Micron’s goal of producing 40 percent of its DRAM in the US,” Micron said.
China ban
Micron is an American producer of computer memory and computer data storage media.
But it also has a presence in four locations in Taiwan and is considered to be a rival to China’s memory maker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC).
US competition with China was highlighted in April 2023, when Chinese regulators launched an investigation into Micron and banned its products from critical infrastructure – in a move widely seen as retaliation for the US adding YMTC to the Entity List blacklist in December 2022.
