On Thursday, April 8, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Brian Deese, director of the White House National Economic Council (NEC), and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will lead a meeting with executives of "a large number of companies" next week to discuss the long-standing shortage of chips:

This will be part of the White House consultation process, and we are working to address a problem that affects a large number of industries. The White House is expected to disclose more information on April 9.

The comments echoed a report in the Wall Street Journal earlier in the day that US President Joe Biden had ordered a review of the supply chain on chip shortages and met with a bipartisan panel of lawmakers to discuss the issue. Next week, senior White House officials will meet with chipmakers to discuss possible measures.

On the news side, General Motors and Ford, the largest traditional automakers in the United States by market capitalization, both announced on Thursday that they would add three more car manufacturing plants to the shutdown list because of a shortage of chips.

Ford said factories in Chicago, Kansas City and Michigan would be shut down for a week, but several plants would cancel summer shutdowns to make up for production shortfalls caused by recent shutdowns. Last week, Ford said it would deepen production cuts in North America because of a "lack of cores", including idling a factory near its Michigan headquarters for two weeks, which is the hub of its biggest cash cow Fmuri 150 pickup truck.

GM plans to idle or cut production for a week or two at three plants previously unaffected by chip shortages, including those in Tennessee and Michigan that produce Chevrolet Traverse and medium-sized SUV such as Cadillac XT5 and XT6. One plant in Kansas City and one in Ontario, Canada, have been closed since early February, and the shutdown will be extended to May 10, affecting Malibu cars and Cadillac XT4.

Meanwhile, another Michigan plant that makes the Chevrolet Traverse and Buick Enclave crossover (crossover) will temporarily suspend production during the week of April 19, and a plant in Mexico will also cancel production of the Chevrolet Blazer SUV, which quickly became the "leader" of the US SUV market last year.

On the same day, in terms of car sales, the German Volkswagen Group, which unfortunately gave way to Japan's Toyota last year, also admitted that key semiconductor supplies will "remain tight" in the coming months. The situation was worsened by production stagnation caused by a rare winter storm in Texas in February, and the impact on annual car production in that state "does not rule out further production adjustments." the impact on annual car production depends on how long the chip shortage lasts.

Analysts generally believe that the shortage of cores in the automobile industry has become more and more serious since the COVID-19 epidemic, mainly because semiconductor manufacturers have allocated more capacity for consumer electronics under the "home economy" upsurge, while the higher-than-expected rebound in car demand does not have the capacity to deal with it. The shutdown was exacerbated by the disruption of petrochemical supplies caused by bad weather in the southern United States at the beginning of the year and a fire at a chip factory in Japan.

Bloomberg said the latest setback from the traditional carmakers could further delay the expected recovery of car production in the second quarter. "production is shrinking rather than increasing, and the balance between supply and demand will only get worse and worse," said Takeshi Miyao, an analyst at research firm Carnorama. "

The suspension of production due to lack of core has begun to erode the profit expectations of car companies.In its quarterly report in February, GM warned that operating profit this year could fall by $1.5 billion to $2 billion due to chip shortages. Ford says the same reason could reduce its profit this year by $1 billion to $2.5 billion.

In recent months, production at almost every major car company has been suppressed, including Toyota, Honda, Fiat Chrysler and Stellantis NV, which was merged with Peugeot Citroen, in addition to the three giants mentioned above. AlixPartners, a consultancy, has estimated that the global auto industry's revenue will plummet by $60.6 billion this year because of chip shortages.

As a result, the market was uneasy, with automakers falling against the backdrop of the S & P 500's two-day record and closing high on Thursday. GM fell 3.3% in intraday trading and closed down more than 1%, nearly erasing all its gains since April. Ford fell 2.4 per cent to 1.6 per cent, the lowest since April 1, while Volkswagen's ADR, which vowed to compete with Tesla in the electric car industry, fell more than 2 per cent.

In fact, electric car giant Tesla is also inevitably plagued by a shortage of chips. It was reported on February 26th that Tesla's California factory with the highest production capacity announced that it would stop production because of a shortage of chips. However, CEO Musk immediately responded on social media that the Fremont plant had been closed for two days only because of a shortage of parts and that the plant had resumed production.

Other tech giants have also been affected. Wall Street reports that Apple has delayed production of some MacBook and iPad from the first half of this year to the second half of this year, mainly due to chip shortages:

Industry sources and experts say chip shortages are getting worse, affecting even giants such as Apple, and smaller technology companies are likely to be even more affected.