Status: 09.08.2022 20:09
Boosting the chip industry is high on the political agenda. After Europe, the USA is now pumping billions into the strategically important industry.
In the race with China and Europe, the USA is helping its domestic chip industry with billions in subsidies. On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden signed the US Chips and Science Act worth around 52 billion dollars. The heads of Micron, Intel, Lockheed Martin, HP and AMD as well as other industry and union representatives, MPs and governors were present at the signing. Details of the funding have yet to be worked out.
According to the law, the production of semiconductors in the USA is to be boosted with 52 billion dollars (almost 51 billion euros). A large part of the money also flows into research and development. The demand for semiconductors rose sharply during the corona pandemic, which – exacerbated by plant closures in China due to lockdowns there – led to global bottlenecks. The US economy, whose share of global semiconductor production had fallen sharply in favor of Asia in recent years, suffered particularly badly.
Europe has already submitted
It was only in February that the EU Commission launched the European counterpart, the “European Chips Act”. Since then, Intel factory projects worth billions have been launched in Magdeburg and at other European locations. The EU Commission emphasized the special importance of the chip industry for the industrial value chain.
In the USA, too, several companies are already in the starting blocks. Qualcomm wants to buy additional semiconductors from GlobalFoundries in New York for 4.2 billion dollars. Car manufacturers and electronics companies in particular are currently suffering from the ongoing shortage of chips. The delivery bottlenecks are also heating up inflation, which has already risen sharply.
Micron announces investments
The US memory chip manufacturer Micron announced investments of 40 billion dollars in semiconductor production in the USA shortly before the law was signed. The company did not initially name locations for new plants. However, it plans to “start production in the second half of the decade”.
Biden welcomed the announcement. “Two other companies, GlobalFoundries and Qualcomm, announced yesterday a $4 billion partnership to manufacture semiconductors in the US that would otherwise have gone overseas,” he said.
However, Micron lowered its outlook today due to weak demand for PCs and continued supply shortages. The company announced that it is expecting a negative cash flow (free cash flow) for the first quarter of the business year, which begins in September. At the same time, sales and margins are likely to fall “significantly”. This did not go down well on the New York technology exchange Nasdaq. The stock loses about five percent.