On Tuesday, Donald Trump finally made it clear to Congress that he wants to kill the CHIPS and Science Act—a $280 billion bipartisan law Joe Biden signed in 2022 to bring more semiconductor manufacturing into the US and put the country at the forefront of research and innovation.

Trump has long expressed frustration with the high cost of the CHIPS Act, telling Congress on Tuesday that it’s a “horrible, horrible thing” to “give hundreds of billions of dollars” in subsidies to companies that he claimed “take our money” and “don’t spend it,” Reuters reported.

“You should get rid of the CHIPS Act, and whatever is left over, Mr. Speaker, you should use it to reduce debt,” Trump said.

Instead, Trump potentially plans to shift the US from incentivizing chips manufacturing to punishing firms dependent on imports, threatening a 25 percent tariff on all semiconductor imports that could kick in as soon as April 2, CNBC reported.

The CHIPS Act was supposed to be Biden’s legacy, and because he made it a priority, much of the $52.7 billion in subsidies that Trump is criticizing has already been finalized. In 2022, Biden approved $39 billion in subsidies for semiconductor firms, and in his last weeks in office, he finalized more than $33 billion in awards, Reuters noted.

Among the awardees are leading semiconductor firms, including the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Micron, Intel, Nvidia, and Samsung Electronics. Although Trump claims the CHIPS Act is one-sided and only serves to benefit firms, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, the law sparked $450 billion in private investments increasing semiconductor production across 28 states by mid-2024.

With the CHIPS Act officially in Trump’s crosshairs, innovation appears likely to stall the longer that lawmakers remain unsettled on whether the law stays or goes. Some officials worried that Trump might interfere with Biden’s binding agreements with leading firms already holding up their end of the bargain, Reuters reported. For example, Micron plans to invest $100 billion in New York, and TSMC just committed to spending the same over the next four years to expand construction of US chips fabs, which is already well underway.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/03/china-aims-to-recruit-top-us-scientists-as-trump-tries-to-kill-the-chips-act/