President Donald Trump strongly criticized the CHIPS and Science Act on Tuesday, calling for the landmark 2022 law to be scrapped and its funding redirected to reduce the national debt.
In a speech to Congress, Trump labeled the CHIPS Act a “horrible, horrible thing,” arguing that the billions of dollars allocated for semiconductor manufacturing had not yielded meaningful results. “We give hundreds of billions of dollars, and it doesn’t mean a thing. They take our money, and they don’t spend it,” Trump said, referring to the law’s provision of $52.7 billion in subsidies for U.S. semiconductor production.
Trump’s remarks marked his most direct and sharpest criticism of the bipartisan law to date. He suggested that rather than providing financial incentives, the U.S. could persuade companies to establish factories domestically by removing tariffs. “We don’t have to give them money,” he added.
The CHIPS and Science Act, signed by President Joe Biden in August 2022, included $39 billion in subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing and related components, along with $75 billion in government lending authority. The law was designed to address national security concerns over reliance on foreign-made chips and bolster the U.S. semiconductor industry.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has praised the program but indicated a desire to review the subsidies awarded under the Biden administration. Under former Secretary Gina Raimondo, the U.S. government secured commitments from five global semiconductor firms to build factories in the U.S. to address risks from imported chips.
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