CHIPS and Science Act

By 2020 the United States made about 12 percent of the world's semiconductors, down from 37 percent in 1990, and the most advanced chips came mainly from Taiwan. With bipartisan support, Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, signed August 9, 2022. It provided about 52.7 billion dollars for semiconductors, including 39 billion in manufacturing incentives run by the Commerce Department, a 25 percent investment tax credit for chip plants, and funding for research, along with authorizations for science agencies.

Commerce awarded grants to companies including Intel, TSMC, Samsung, Micron, and GlobalFoundries for plants in Arizona, Ohio, Texas, New York, and elsewhere, often in installments tied to construction milestones. Companies receiving money agreed to limits on expanding advanced chip production in China. The law spurred hundreds of billions of dollars in announced private investment, though some projects were delayed.

In August 2025 the administration converted about 8.9 billion dollars of Intel's unpaid CHIPS grants and other funds into a 9.9 percent government stake in the company, making the government Intel's largest shareholder, and said it would seek returns from other awards. Supporters said taxpayers should share in the upside of companies they subsidize. Critics in both parties said the conversion was not what Congress authorized and turned a subsidy program into state ownership, while others questioned the original subsidies as corporate welfare.