The newly formed ‘Semiconductors in America Coalition’, which also includes Amazon, said this Tuesday, May 11, that it will ask US lawmakers to provide funding for the ‘CHIPS for America Act’ – an initiative led by Joe Biden by calling on Congress to provide $50 billion (€41 billion).
Some of the largest chip buyers in the world, such as Apple, Microsoft or Alphabet (Google’s owner), have joined the main chip manufacturers, such as Intel, to finance and boost a project that aims to increase the production of semiconductor chips in the U.S. territory, taking advantage of the set of subsidies announced by Biden’s administration for the sector, advances “Reuters”.
The newly formed ‘Semiconductors in America Coalition’, which also includes Amazon, said this Tuesday, May 11, that it will ask US lawmakers to provide funding for the ‘CHIPS for America Act’ – an initiative led by Joe Biden through a call for Congress to provide $50 billion (€41 billion).
“Robust funding for the CHIPS Act would help the United States build the additional capacity needed to have more resilient supply chains that secure critical technologies,” the group said in a letter sent to Democratic and Republican leaders in both houses of the US Congress.
The global chip shortage has hit auto manufacturers hard, with Ford saying it might have to halve its production in the second quarter. Auto industry groups have pressed the Biden administration to secure chip supplies for their factories, even though “Reuters” has come forward with information about some U.S. government officials who are “reluctant” to use a national security law to redirect computer chips to manufacturers because it could hurt other industries.
The new partnership includes some of those other chip-consuming industries, with members including AT&T, Cisco, General Electric, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HP), and Verizon. The group warned against government actions to favor a single industry, such as auto manufacturers.
“The government should refrain from intervening while industry works to correct the current supply-demand imbalance that is causing the shortage,” the group said. Technology companies like Apple are also being hit by chip shortages, but less severely than companies in the auto industry.
The iPhone maker said last month that it will lose between three and four billion dollars (2.4 and 3.2 billion euros) in sales in the current quarter ending in June due to the chip shortage, but that amounts to a small percentage of the 72.9 billion dollars (59.9 billion euros) in sales that analysts anticipate for Apple’s fiscal third quarter, according to Refinitiv’s revenue estimates.
