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Comment by georgeburdell | Hacker News Reader

According to that website, Intel has received $6B in government subsidies from 1993/2000, variously, to present. Here are Intel's profits for the past 5 full years:

2020: $20.9B [0]

2019: $21B [0]

2018: $21.1B [1]

2017: $9.6B [1]

2016: $10.3B [2]

$6B is a low single digit percentage of their profit going back 28 years. BOE has been subsidized on a whole other level and they're still not consistently profitable.

[0] https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1439/...

[1] https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1092/...

[2] https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1102/...

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There's a lot of nuance missing from your post. First, $6bn between 1993 and 2000 is worth a bit more in today's money. Second, the $6bn you mention is only what Intel Corp received directly; money to their suppliers, subsidiaries, companies they acquired immediately after the subsidy was granted, etc won't be counted in that total. And lastly, if you counted 2021 in the number you'd have to add tens of billions more due to a huge surge in chip manufacturer subsidies passed by the senate recently.

There's nothing wrong with subsidising Intel. They're competing against countries like South Korea whose government recently announced a package of chip manufacturer subsidies worth $450bn after all. They won't be able to compete if they're aren't given a little help.

The fact that $6 Billion dollars is a fraction of their profit suggests the United States could just regulate that they and other large US semiconductor firms must produce more chips locally. No need to subsidize.

Or just put taxes on foreign dumping/oversubsidized products. Development grants are good things but these huge companies don’t need them, have plenty of resources to build capacity and new products. We should be funding new competition and science not playing subsidizing games with our biggest companies.

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