Global Courant 2023-04-15 04:41:39
More than 200 companies from countless industries applied for CHIPS Act funding, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo told CNBC’s Jim Cramer Friday, as part of what Raimondo called a mandate to “invest $50 billion in America’s national security.”
The CHIPS Act was signed into law in August 2022 as part of a massive investment package designed to catapult U.S. semiconductor manufacturing back to global primacy and reshape the way companies decide where to invest their manufacturing budgets.
“Enough chips of the right kind, all along the supply chain, in the United States,” Raimondo said, describing what she was looking for. The recipient companies are varied, but Raimondo told Cramer that some of the money will be routed to “packaging companies, leading companies” in the US.
There are important caveats to accepting federal aid, Raimondo said.
“It has to be spent in America,” the Commerce Secretary told Cramer. Raimondo made it a particular point to pick China.
“If you take our money, you can’t expand in China for leading chips,” Raimondo said.
The ban on foreign investment is designed to prevent taxpayers’ money from subsidizing foreign economies, but the CHIPS Act as a whole has sparked controversy, even with US allies. The European Union, for example, already is to withdraw with a smaller $47 billion semiconductor package.
More than half of the applications relate to the first tranche of CHIPS Act funding, which includes mature node and advanced chip facilities. Those same applications span 35 states, according to a National Institute of Standards and Technology press release.
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