KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has reportedly indicated that he could hold back CHIPS Act awards promised by the Biden administration if the recipients don’t expand their U.S. projects significantly.
- According to Bloomberg, Lutnick wants the companies that won the awards to follow TSMC, which has pledged an added $100 billion to its investment plan.
- President Donald Trump has been a critic of the CHIPS Act and signed an executive order Monday to create an office aimed, the White House said, at “negotiating much better CHIPS Act deals than the previous Administration.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has reportedly indicated that he could hold back CHIPS Act awards promised by the Biden administration if the recipients don’t expand the size of their semiconductor projects in the U.S. significantly.
According to Bloomberg, citing eight people familiar with the matter, Lutnick wants the companies that won the awards to follow Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM), which has pledged an added $100 billion to its initial $65 billion investment plan in U.S. plants.
Bloomberg said Lutnick is seeking to generate billions of dollars in chips investments by companies without raising the size of the awards.
The Department of Commerce didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Donald Trump has been a critic of the CHIPS and Science Act, a 2022 piece of legislation supported by then-President Joe Biden that earmarked over $50 billion to boost semiconductor production domestically.
On Monday, Trump signed an executive order to set up an office named the United States Investment Accelerator within the Department of Commerce to facilitate and accelerate investments above $1 billion in the United States. The program is responsible for the CHIPS Act program, aimed, it said, at “negotiating much better CHIPS Act deals than the previous Administration,” the White House said in its fact sheet about the order.