A group of nine governors have sent a letter to House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders urging them to pass legislation that would provide billions in financial aid to microchip producers.
According to Bloomberg, the letter urges rapid approval of the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act, or the CHIPS for America Act. This legislation, which would provide U.S. semiconductor producers with $52 billion in federal funding, was originally included as part of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) that was passed by the Senate in June. This bill eventually stalled in the House and has since been put on the backburner as the Biden Administration works to flesh out its $1.75 trillion economic agenda.
President Biden with GM President Mark Reuss
The letter initiative was led by Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. In addition to Whitmer, it was also signed by the governors of Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Kansas and California.
Some Republicans and Democrats have been urging the administration to separate the funding for microchip producers from the Senate bill and pass it as standalone legislation, Bloomberg also reports. This could potentially prevent the funding from being delayed as other, unrelated language in the bill is fleshed out, providing more timely aid to the struggling chip production sector in America.
According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, the share global semiconductor manufacturing capacity in the U.S. has eroded from 37 percent in 1990 to just 12 percent today. With the majority of automotive chip production occurring abroad, American automakers have struggled to maintain a consistent supply amid the supply crunch, hampering their production output and hurting profits.
The governors’ letter was set to be delivered to House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday.
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Comments
I’m pretty sure all of AMERICA new the CHIPS were a big problem… Now the Governers thing they have to say something. What a joke it must be time for them to run for election. So, they have to pretend like their interested. In 2 weeks, they’ll say yes, we have a GAS shortage and it will cost you a ton of money to stay warm this winter.
That’s a lot of typos. Or…
Maybe we shouldn’t have picked apart the spending bill on infrastructure that would have originally solved this problem along with many others.
Maybe they should stop blowing tax payer money.
So another taxpayer-funded bailout of ineptly run companies.
I am not so sure the companies are run bad Mr. Grizzly. It may be that the chip producers went overseas to avoid the costs of union wages or simply to avoid the heavy taxation in the US on profits which we all know pays the investors according to how much stock they own. I do not like President Biden one bit but I do like his idea of a universal tax so that part of the problem may be settled. President Trump had it right when he was giving getting industries to move back to the US and build new plants. Too bad he could not have kept his mouth shut and he would still be President. May he come again or at least a Republican that understands conservatism.
Everybody complains and want the Government to do it all. How about you build it yourself, God forbid it may take part of your profit. You wanted a global economy, You got it ! America depends on everybody but themselves, what the hell happen to us.
Just my own views to answer your question: Companies used to be run by people who, themselves, had experience in making what it is the company makes. Young men who twirled a wrench in their youth ended up designing engines and other drive train parts. Ford himself was an engineer of sorts, as was Edison, and they ended up founding Ford Motor and General Electric respectively. Hewlett and Packard were engineers.
Today, virtually every company is run by someone with a business degree and haven’t ever worked a shop floor, built anything, or repaired anything. They have NO passion for their products or services. They think in “units”, not cars, washing machines, pianos, or whatever they may be making. They care not about where the jobs may be placed, just the sales of units and the bottom line. In short, they have no souls.
I mentioned General Electric. What do they really manufacture anymore? Engines and generators pretty much wraps it up. Most of the rest is just their name slapped on often-shoddy goods made by foreign companies that pay a license fee to put the GE label on their product. When those foreign companies made things here (Thompson-Houston of France made GE-labeled TVS in, I think, Indiana) I could accept it. That’s all gone.
As for so much being imported, and again, these are my views: too many bought into the mantra of US-made bad / imported good. I am old enough to recall people combing Honda lots looking for Japanese Hondas because “everyone” “knew” the ones from Ohio were “no good”. Second, manufacturers got sick and tired of a constant parade of federal and state alphabet agencies marching through their facilities, looking for reasons to write stiff fines, shut a plant down, or arrest someone. Pile on demands for hiring quotas and manufacturing of product overseas starts looking highly attractive.
Unreasonable union demands did some damage, sure, but far from all of it.
From the mid 1970s until early 1990s the largest manufacturer of microchips in the world was GM, and was mostly in the US. Until 10 years ago the US was the worlds premiere designer of the best computer chips, and the best manufacturing processes. We need to recapture both of those titles, with out some major help from the government( both fiscal and regulatory) the ability of the US to catch up will be hampered.
Gov bailout continues for corporate stupidity.
Gov’t assistance is needed to help remediate the damage done by over regulation and poor policy that rewarded companies for off-shoring many jobs in the late 90s and early 2000s. Also to compete with China which by default owns 51% of every business in China. Just look at something simple like drywall screws..1995 USA made 5.99/pound, CCP made 1.99/pound. Now USA made do not exist, CCP made 8.99/pound. Magnify that across whole manufacturing scope and you will see why manufacturing needs help. Now coupled with skyrocketing shipping costs and DJT’s tariffs many manufacturers are coming to US and the Americas. This will help on many fronts such as new factories in S.America giving relief to people who may other wise move northward.
In this story, it’s not clear to me that government intervention to build new and additional chip plants is low interest loans, tax incentives or just give away the money?