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China, not self-sufficiency, is US target in chips initiative

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The US does not seek “self-sufficiency” or a “subsidy race” in chips but will continue to rally allies around the world to enhance semiconductor controls to outcompete Chinain a hi-tech competition, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said.


The Biden administration will kick off its US$53 billion investment programme on February 28, when applications open for the first round of funding under the Chips and Science Act, with a focus on commercial manufacturing facilities.


In a speech at Georgetown University on Thursday, Raimondo said the US aims to design and produce the world’s most advanced chips on its shores by 2030 and be “the only country in the world” where every company capable of producing leading-edge chips has a significant research and development and high-volume manufacturing presence.


“What we’re not trying to do is aim for self-sufficiency,” she said. “We don’t want a subsidy race. And we certainly don’t want to produce all the chips we need in America.”

Raimondo said the US aims to have at least two large-scale clusters for leading-edge logic fabs by 2030, each including a supplier ecosystem, R&D facilities and thousands of workers. She did not elaborate on where they might be located.


The Chips Act allocates US$39 billion in incentives to encourage companies to build and expand. In addition to next week’s manufacturing applications, the Commerce Department will be putting out funding opportunities for supply chain companies and R&D investments in coming months.

The ambitious chips initiative, as well as the Inflation Reduction Act, have raised concerns among US allies in Europe and Asia that Washington’s efforts to secure its role as a global technological superpower – through “unfair” subsidies – could come at their expense.

Brussels proposed its own act one year ago to increase semiconductor production in the European Union.


Raimondo said the Biden administration is committed to transparency with its allies over the chips programme and is working with them to develop strategies to avoid creating a subsidy race.


She said the US is already talking to Europe, Japan and South Korea to figure out how to cooperate on the Chips Act, adding that she believed the US will be dependent on them for manufacturing “for a long time”.

“And that’s fine. That’s trade, that’s globalisation, that is all OK. But what we cannot have is what we have now, which is an untenable reliance upon one or two companies for what we need for national security.”

Raimondo said US reliance on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for 92 per cent of its most sophisticated chips is “a vulnerability” and “unsustainable”, even though most are still based on American technology.


She also said that US manufacturing atrophy posed a threat to its national security when China has produced more than 80 per cent of new global capacity over the past two years for certain mature chips that the US needs in cars and medical devices.

Raimondo said the US will continue to work with its allies to enforce restrictions in the chip sector. “Investments in chips allow us to gain an edge … more controls and restrictions with our allies allow us to keep the edge.”


She added that the effort would also keep “malign actors” from accessing some technologies.

Collaborating with other nations on export controls would also put Washington in a stronger position with regards to China, Raimondo said.

US President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Chips Act into law last August, to help jump-start renewed production on American soil of advanced semiconductors and enhance the country’s competitiveness against China.


Just two months later, the administration updated restrictions on China’s ability to acquire high-end US chip technology, equipment and even talent in a 139-page document.


In December, TSMC announced an expanded US$40 billion investment at its US production hub in Arizona.

And in January, the US, Japan and the Netherlands reportedly reached an agreement to impose export controls on certain chip-making equipment to China, a move that would undercut Beijing’s ambitions to build up its own semiconductor capabilities. Details of the deal have not been made public.


Raimondo said the US is ahead of China in chip technology and emphasised that American export controls are narrowly tailored and designed to deny Beijing certain technology that it wants for military use.


“We’re going to do whatever we need to do to make that happen,” she said.

 
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