If the government gives money then it better talk to these companies about where their items are produced.
I agree that they should be the ones to invest in these fabs, but it also makes sense for the government to make sure that is an internationally competitive move for them to make, rather than forcing them to pour water uphill.
Which policies? I believe you, genuinely curious
Obviously any barriers to the success of US fabs should be removed, but it's not clear if there's a market for more expensive US chips - if there were, you'd think someone would build it without the need for a subsidy
Often trade deals do include agreements about subsidies.
> it's not clear if there's a market for more expensive US chips - if there were, you'd think someone would build it without the need for a subsidy
They wouldn’t be more expensive with the subsidy.
Yes but it's complicated when you're dealing with China where the govt is heavily involved in many "private" cos
Too many outsiders tend to err on giving the benefit of the doubt, thinking that there's some sort of Chesterton's fence (you can see this in the comments here), but it's just not true. So much of what causes delays that I've seen firsthand comes down to unbelievably inefficient business processes plus the less-than-stellar pool of candidates that the industry overwhelmingly prefers to hire from.
~Montgomery Burns...probably
Because they are for-profit entities with shareholders interest as top priority, and it is much more profitable to use TSMC/Samsung for them. With subsidies, the situation may change.
Intel has been building fab capacity pretty much always, it's just that their 10nm process doesn't work as intended, and they haven't really been able to fix it, so their development is stalled and their production numbers aren't great and they haven't been able to stop making processors at 14nm to do other things with those fabs. So far, I think we've been hearing of delays on their 7nm node as well, so no good news there.
That said, if there's a market for a 14nm or more fab in the US, Intel has shown they can build that, but they'd probably prefer to spend their money getting 7nm to work than building an old tech fab; spending other people's money on a new 14nm (or whatever) fab in the US is still good for Intel though, so it's no wonder they'd put their hand out to do that.