Trump says Samsung building “massive” manufacturing facilities in the US

One rationale for the tariffs that President Trump has imposed on virtually every country is that this exercise will help bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Companies would be incentivized to promote local production in order to avoid the tariff impact on products they were otherwise importing to sell in the United States.

Samsung's particularly exposed to the tariffs, given that it has production facilities across the globe and sells a lot of different products in the US, everything from smartphones to TVs and washing machines. Could we see it move more facilities to the US? President Trump latest comments suggest so.

Talking about tariff policies during a cabinet meeting yesterday at the White House, Trump said that “I heard Samsung is now, because of tariffs, they are going to build massive facilities in the United States.” He added that “If we didn't do the tariffs, they wouldn't be doing that.”

The president also spoke about Samsung during a separate event concerning business leaders that planned to invest in the US. “Even Samsung whose name isn't mentioned here, but I heard that they announced this morning that they're going to be building a very big plant because they want to be able to beat the tariffs,” he said.

Samsung mentioned during its Q1 2025 earnings call yesterday that it plans to move production of some TV and home appliance products to other facilities so that the impact of these tariffs can be minimized. The company didn't say it was setting up new facilities in the US to manufacture these products.

It's unclear whether Trump is referring to as yet undisclosed plans by Samsung to start manufacturing home appliances and possibly mobile devices in the US. What the company is building in the US is a new nearly $17 billion chipmaking plant in Taylor, Texas, in addition to the chipmaking facilities it already has in Austin, Texas.