Engineering company Smiths Group has become the latest manufacturer to establish a route around US President Donald Trump’s trade policies, by preparing to make some of its semiconductor testing devices in Texas instead of China.
Chief executive Roland Carter told the Financial Times the FTSE 100 conglomerate had been shifting manufacturing of its semiconductor “sockets”, used to trial newly made chips, from Suzhou, in China, to Texas.
The company said the move, which they started making last July, before November’s US presidential election, had been prompted by years of escalating trade restrictions. The curbs started during Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, and continued under his successor, Joe Biden.