① On Monday, US Secretary of Commerce Raymond said he is in negotiations with chip industry executives and is expected to announce more chip subsidy news within the next 6-8 weeks; ② Earlier, Intel announced the postponement of its factory project in Ohio, and TSMC and Samsung Electronics also said they will invest in the construction of new factories in Asia; ③ the delay in US chip subsidies has dampened the enthusiasm of the chip industry to invest in the US.
Financial Services, Feb. 6 (Editor: Malan) The US government's long-overdue chip bill has finally reached a critical moment to issue a large number of subsidies. On Monday, US Secretary of Commerce Raymond said that the Department of Commerce plans to begin funding within two months.
Raimondo said that negotiations with chip companies are currently in very complicated and extremely challenging. She also promised that more subsidies related announcements will be made in the next six to eight weeks.
The total scale of this US chip program is 39 billion US dollars. These subsidies will fund chip companies to build new factories, reduce pressure on production costs, invest in supply chains, and more advanced research. The maximum subsidy limit can reach 35% of the capital expenditure of a single project.
Raimondo added that the investments involved are all highly complex and pioneering. Whether in terms of scale or complexity, the projects proposed by TSMC, Samsung, and Intel for development in the US are an unprecedented experiment.
Stabilize people's hearts
The US chip bill was approved by Congress in August 2022, but up to now, the US government has only issued two small subsidies from this plan. This has also been criticized by the industry, which believes that the government approval is too slow.
However, Raimondo has always said that the US government's subsidy process is not lagging behind. However, Intel recently announced that it is delaying the construction of its $20 billion plant in Ohio in the US. One important reason has been interpreted as the US government's delay in issuing chip aid.
Meanwhile, TSMC and Samsung Electronics recently announced that they will continue to invest tens of billions of dollars to build new factories in Asia. Analysts believe that this means that these two major semiconductor companies will put aside or slow down their factory construction in the US to a certain extent.
Although TSMC and Samsung Electronics' factories in the US may still be profitable, it is clearly contrary to the original intention of the US to transfer global chip production capacity to the US. However, the root cause is probably partly related to the US government's failure to provide relevant subsidies to TSMC and Samsung Electronics in a timely manner.
This is probably also one of the reasons why Raymond revealed the timing of the subsidy payment in advance, hoping to stabilize the chip industry's confidence in the US.
In addition to this, Raymondo also added that although the chip industry has always had cyclical problems and the current market situation is poor, she believes artificial intelligence will drive the recovery of chip demand in a way that has never been seen before.