Unlock free Digest editor
Roula Khalaf, editor of FT, chooses her favorite story in this weekly newsletter.
Former Upper Banker on Wall Street and longtime Elon Musk ally led the US Government’s cleaning office in charge of the management of billions of dollars in semiconducting subsidies.
Chips programs, a three-year heart-based agency, tries to restore the vital production of chips to America, has become the latest target of the Trump administration attack on Government bureaucracy.
Last week, Michael Grimes, former investment banker Morgan Stanley who helped finance Musk’s Twitter acquisition in the amount of $ 44 billion, and a small district has taken a series of interviews with a selected staff at the Chips office, according to several people familiar with this question.
Grimes and his team cited the employees in the office sitting in the Ministry of Trade, to seek a certain employee profile they wanted to keep.
“They asked mathematical questions such as:” What is four to fourth forces? “, One person said. The other said they were asked about their” intellectual capacity “. The third interview, which included multiple staff, described as” humiliation “.
The Last-Minut Return of the Weekend by higher staff against the initial plans for the ax of all, except five test members of the staff, resulted in 22 ultimately spared, people said.
But dozens of employees on one or two-year-old trial contract still torn abruptly, which reflected the Directive from the Staff Management Office in January and clarified by administration on Tuesday.
The office had previously had about 150 employees. These staff dismissals have come to the number that have already decided to accept the delayed resignation.
They terminated the whole team of “external and government jobs”, as well as advisers for politics in his strategy department, people said. By Tuesday, some staff had already written the leadership of the agency, asking him to return.
A senior administration official confirmed that Grimes had met the staff, but said that the decisions about who was made in collaboration with the head in the office and did not act unilaterally.
Grimes occupied a former general lawyer on the fifth floor of the Ministry of Trade, in the neighborhood of the Howard Lutnick Secretary, to introduce one person to this issue.
“Everyone is very cage on what Grimes intends,” they said. “This is not a psychological healthy place to work.”
In the early weeks of his second career, Grimes is after three decades with Morgan Stanley, where he was one of the bankers of Star Investment.
He led lists on the stock market for several technological companies, most importantly winning the mandate for the leading of Uber’s IPO after working on the side as one of his drivers.
Recently, several musk allies were installed in agencies across the US government, in charge of reducing costs and staff. Similar efforts were ongoing USAIDThe Veterans Affairs Department, GSA and even the Ministry of Defense, with thousands of government workers, and contracts worth billions of dollars have terminated.
In his speech Congress on Tuesday, Trump described the Law on Chips of 2022, one of his leading policies of his predecessor Joe Biden, as a “terrible thing.” He said he would give the industry “without money,” and called on the president of the house Mike Johnson to abolish the act and redistributed what the funds remained.
A problematic US chip manufacturer in the Intel and Taiwanese tsmc Among the biggest users of the Cypsum Act and have already received tranša financing for the main construction projects.
They were awarded 7.9 billion. Samsung in South Korea was awarded $ 4.8 billion. All three companies refused to comment.
People familiarize the discussions between the Trump team and the industry said that they could only speculate what the latest moves could mean to the program, with the fact that now it would be unclear whether to expect a complete return of subsidies or more measured to persuade each agreement.
But they added that at least for now, the key staff that had to be monitored by the distribution of subsidies was still in place.
“President Trump has received an echoing mandate for returning common sense in the Government and reinforcing American production with his US first economic policy of tariff and deregulation,” said the Kush Desai White House spokesman in response to commentary.
“TSMC historical An investment in the amount of $ 100 billion The announcement indicates real, tangible results that Trump’s administration provides for the American people, “he added.
Additional reporting Demetri Sevastopulo, Joshua Franklin, Antoine Gara, Joe Miller and Arash Massoud
