Chipping Away at CHIPS

IN MARCH, PRESIDENT Donald Trump blasted the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act of 2022.

- By Peter Suderman

He called it “a horrible, horrible thing.” Passed under President Joe Biden, the CHIPS Act was essentially a $52 billion industrial policy slush fund intended primarily to bolster domestic production of computer chips.

When the law passed in 2022, the Biden administration said it was a “smart investment” that would “strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology” while bringing thousands of “good-paying manufacturing jobs back home.”

There was never much reason to believe in the previous administration’s industrial policy boosterism. Early grants largely went either to factories that were already in development and would have been built anyway or to facilities of questionable economic value that might not be completed even with the additional taxpayer funding.