The Semiconductor Industry Association, the trade group that represents Intel (INTC -0.65%) and other U.S. semiconductor companies, plans to lobby the federal government for billions of dollars in funding to build chip plants on U.S. soil, reported the Wall Street Journal.
Citing a draft of the proposal put forth by the Semiconductor Industry Association whose members also include Broadcom, Micron, and AMD, the WSJ reported it wants the federal government to offer up $37 billion in funding to go to states wooing semiconductor companies and for research and development.
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The industry trade group wants $15 billion earmarked for grants to go to states to use as incentives to lure chip plants, $5 billion for a new chip factory that the government and the private sector would create, and $17 billion for federal research. The plants will be built in the U.S. but the SIA said the funding would go to both U.S. and foreign companies.
The semiconductor industry and the White House have been holding talks about how to reduce U.S. reliance on China for chip production as tensions between the two nations heighten. The WSJ noted that while the proposal isn’t likely to get approved in its current form, the chip industry does have the support of Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Ross told the WSJ the Trump Administration is committed to a homegrown “high-tech ecosystem” that’s supported by chips developed in the U.S. Meanwhile a group of bipartisan lawmakers want increased funding for technology including semiconductor research.
Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing are among the semiconductor companies that have been holding talks with the White House about building chip plants in the U.S. Following news of those talks, TSMC announced its building a $12 billion chip fabrication plant in Arizona, which will lead to more than 1,600 jobs. Construction will commence in 2021.
