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Congress in August 2022 approved the landmark Chips and Science
Act. The law provides that $52.7 billion, including $39 billion
in subsidies for semiconductor production and $11 billion
research and development. It also creates a 25% investment tax
credit for building chip plants, estimated to be worth $24
billion.
The centerpiece of the R&D program is the National Semiconductor
Technology Center, which will conduct research and prototyping
of advanced semiconductor technology.
The center is a "public private partnership that the government,
industry customers, suppliers, academics, entrepreneurs, venture
capitalists to come together to innovate, connect, network,
solve problems and allow Americans to compete and out compete
the world," U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said at a
White House event.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the effort was part of
an "industrial strategy around chips" to preventing the loss of
jobs overseas and add American jobs. "A nation that does not do
R&D is a weak nation," Granholm said at the event. "We are not
going to be weak anymore."
NSTC will establish an investment fund to help emerging
semiconductor companies advance technologies toward
commercialization.
The 2022 law also creates the National Advanced Packaging
Manufacturing Program and new Manufacturing USA institutes
focused on semiconductors.
Raimondo on Monday said Commerce plans to make several major
awards to fund chip manufacturing within two months. "We're in
the process of really complicated, challenging negotiations with
these companies," Raimondo told Reuters in an interview. She did
not identify the companies. In the "next six to eight weeks, you
will see several more announcements. That's what we're striving
for."
The semiconductor manufacturing program is intended to subsidize
chip production and related supply chain investments. The awards
will help build factories and increase production.
"These are highly complex, first-of-their-kind facilities" in
the U.S., Raimondo said, noting that TSMC, Samsung, Intel, are
among companies that have proposed them.
"These are new-generation investments -- size, scale complexity
that's never been done before in this country," Raimondo said.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Anirudh
Saligrama in Bengaluru; Editing by David Gregorio)
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