Chip companies create lobby group for US federal funds
Major chip companies from around the world – including Intel, TSMC and Samsung – and the big US businesses that rely on them, have formed a coalition to push for the US government to spend billions of dollars subsidizing US domestic chip manufacturing.
The group is called the Semiconductors in America Coalition and it includes 25 US chip companies from AMD to Xilinx and including Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Globalfoundries and Texas Instruments. The chip users in the group include Apple, Google, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Verizon and AT&T.
Intriguingly a number of companies not headquartered in the US are also members of SIAC including: ARM, Kioxia, Infineon, NXP, Samsung, SK Hynix and TSMC. Semiconductor manufacturing equipment and materials members include ASML, Nikon, Tokyo Electron and Soitec.
The SIAC states its mission is to advance federal policies that promote semiconductor manufacturing and research in the U.S. to strengthen America’s economy, national security, and critical infrastructure.
This large and powerful group may be pushing at an open door but they want to make sure that Congress provides as least $50 billion in funding for US domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research. This would be a part of President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure package, which is coming under pressure from Republican politicians.
The newly-formed coalition has sent a letter to congressional leaders urging enactment of plan to allocate $50 billion to fund the CHIPS for America Act. The letter notes that “it is 20 to 40 percent more expensive to build and operate a fab in the US compared to overseas Consequently, the U.S. global share of semiconductor manufacturing has steadily eroded from 37 percent in 1990 to 12 percent today.”
The letter also notes the current shortage of semiconductors and said that in the long term, providing federal funding: “would help America build the additional capacity necessary to have more resilient supply chains to ensure critical technologies will be there when we need them.”
The letter went on to say that manufacturing incentives funded by Congress should focus on filling gaps in the US domestic semiconductor ecosystem and cover the full range of semiconductor technologies and process nodes – from legacy to leading-edge.
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