President-elect Donald Trump met with Apple CEO Tim Cook, announced at his ‘Make America Great Again Victory Rally’ rally, saying the CEO plans to invest in the US, after DAMAC and Softbank.
The Biden administration has already allocated tens of billions of dollars under the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act passed in 2022 to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing, but President Donald Trump return to the White House has fueled speculation about the future of the projects.
Trump criticized the law before the election, saying during his interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience” in October, “That chip deal is so bad.” The president criticized sending billions of taxpayer dollars to “rich companies” and suggested that imposing tariffs on chips made overseas would be a better way to move manufacturing to the US
Then-Intel CEO Brian Krzanich speaks during a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on February 8, 2017 in Washington, DC. Krzanich announced a $7 billion investment to build a plant in Chandler, Arizona to create an advanced semi-finished product (Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images/Getty Images)
GOP Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters in November that Republicans would “probably” try to repeal the CHIPS Act, but quickly retracted his comments and said in a later statement that the bill was “not on the repeal agenda.”
Then last month, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Claude Barfield wrote a scathing commentary, saying, “It’s impossible to know at this point how serious Trump’s opposition to CHIPS funding will be when he takes office—he’s often dropped it during the campaigns and not followed through on it afterward.”
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“Anyway,” Barfield continued, “[Trump’s] the potential defunding of CHIPS semiconductor ‘factories’ is dangerous and deceptive.”
Barfield noted that the bill had strong support from Republican lawmakers – particularly from states where CHIPS Act funding supports new plants and jobs.
Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and co-chairman of the Trump 2024 transition team, speaks at a rally for former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York on October 27, 2024. (ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images)
But Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnickrecently told outgoing Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo during a staff meeting that he was committed to moving forward with the program, according to a Bloomberg report last week, which cited people familiar with the matter.
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For now, at least one chipmaker seems confident that the Trump administration will continue to fund its manufacturing projects at U.S.-based Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC). CFO Wendell Huang recently told CNBC that the company expects to still receive the $6.6 billion it was awarded to build the three facilities in Arizona.
The CHIPS Act’s main beneficiary, Intel, made sure to mention the program when congratulating Trump at his inauguration on Monday.
| Ticker | Safety | Last | Change | Change % |
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| INTC | INTEL CORP. | 21.49 | +1.83 |
+9.31% |
Industry watchers expect The CHIPS Act remain in place under Trump 2.0, save for some possible tweaks.
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Scott Lincicome, vice president for general economics and trade at the Cato Institute, told FOX Business in an interview that he surmises there could be some minor changes in enforcement, but sees major changes unlikely.
President Joe Biden delivers a speech at the Intel Ocotillo Campus on March 20, 2024 in Chandler, Arizona. Biden announced $8.5 billion in federal CHIPS Act funding for Intel Corp. for semiconductor manufacturing in Arizona.
“If you think back to 2020 when TSMC first made its announcement in Arizona, Trump was a big supporter,” Lincicome said, noting that the first Trump administration worked behind the scenes to support TSMC’s efforts. “That was before CHIPS, but it’s basically the same thing.”
He pointed to Trump’s goals for onshore semiconductor manufacturing, the national security interest in U.S. chip manufacturing and the fact that the chip projects are in politically important states.
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“When you add it all up, I don’t see the bottom line changing at all in the CHIPS Act,” he said. “You might see some changes in the way the Biden administration implemented the law — you know, they had crazy things, like mandatory child care for construction workers, and then there’s some DEI stuff … and you might see that these things have been withdrawn.”
