Now, we're rewarding them with 7.9B of our taxpayer dollars.
This is just disgusting. I'm a liberal, but how are people surprised that Trump won?
TSMC is trying to do fabs here but that's going to take ages to scale.
The real question is, how do you subsidize this sort of development from scratch while not hamstringing or ignoring already developed abilities. For promoting advanced chip fab inside of the US, intel is america's best bet.
The only other option would have been AMD, but they closed their on-shore fabs like two decades ago afaicr.
The AMD option is already called "global foundries" for good reason. IBM is also out of the chip fabrication business, having sold their assets to GloFo.
The CHIPS act gives handouts to companies like Intel ostensibly to contribute to national defense by creating domestic production of chips used in military equipment. However this will also aid Intel in its commercial enterprises not just contracts with the military. And to the extent it does, those profits won't be realized by the taxpayers that funded them.
Taxpayers should receive equity for funding privately held companies. Alternatively, if we don't want to encroach on the sacred profits of our dear corporations, the government could require that chip manufacturing has to occur in the US without capitalizing them. That way chip manufacturing remains in the US and the market can bear the risk and reward of chip ventures.
My god.
The goal here isn't to make companies more virtuous. It is to change the landscape of an industry in a way that will protect the United States.
To that end, I wish the government just said, we’ve deemed you a provider of essential goods, find a way to get your company to invest onshore, or we will find a way to get your company to invest onshore, your choice.
I know, I know, slippery slope, but it’d be great if we could do this instead of giving them taxpayer money in this way - in the long, long term it’s good for the country, but in the short term it’s good for their stock.
Because some things are just too important to pay for honestly?