With CHIPS Act, US Risks Building a White Elephant
By Alan Patterson, EE Times (December 7, 2021)
The U.S. Senate has approved $52 billion for the CHIPS for America Act, aimed at reviving the American semiconductor industry over the next decade. While the Act awaits approval in the House of Representatives, we should examine whether it is the most effective way to encourage investment in domestic manufacturing.
One of the key goals of the CHIPS Act is to encourage renewed investment in manufacturing. But the conditions that have caused the U.S. to fall behind are not addressed by the Act. The US incentive structure is skewed because there’s a stronger impetus for executives to choose stock buybacks over reinvesting in operations.
Several U.S. tech companies now lobbying for the CHIPS Act have squandered past support from the U.S. government while instead showing more appetite for share buybacks to boost company stock prices. Among the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) corporate signatories of a recent letter to President Biden, Intel, IBM, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Broadcom did a combined $249 billion in buybacks over the decade 2011-2020, according to William Lazonick, Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts.
To read the full article, click here
Related Semiconductor IP
- NFC wireless interface supporting ISO14443 A and B with EEPROM on SMIC 180nm
- DDR5 MRDIMM PHY and Controller
- RVA23, Multi-cluster, Hypervisor and Android
- HBM4E PHY and controller
- LZ4/Snappy Data Compressor
Related News
- U.S. Passes CHIPS Act, Increasing Restrictions on China Lead to Rising Geopolitical Risk, Says Trendforce
- Strict Restrictions Imposed by US CHIPS Act Will Lower Willingness of Multinational Suppliers to Invest; Chinese Semiconductor Development Will Be Limited for Next Decade, Says TrendForce
- GlobalFoundries Submits Applications for U.S. CHIPS and Science Act Funding
- Largest CHIPS Act Awards Seen Coming for U.S. Companies
Latest News
- CAST Releases First Dual LZ4 and Snappy Lossless Data Compression IP Core
- Arteris Wins “AI Engineering Innovation Award” at the 2025 AI Breakthrough Awards
- SEMI Forecasts 69% Growth in Advanced Chipmaking Capacity Through 2028 Due to AI
- eMemory’s NeoFuse OTP Qualifies on TSMC’s N3P Process, Enabling Secure Memory for Advanced AI and HPC Chips
- AIREV and Tenstorrent Unite to Launch Advanced Agentic AI Stack