Micron Technology, a Boise, Idaho-based chipmaker, yesterday announced plans to invest $40B in memory chip manufacturing in the US through 2030—the largest investment in memory manufacturing in history. Micron expects to grow the US market share of global chip production from less than 2% to up to 10% through the creation of 40,000 jobs and with production slated to begin in the second half of the decade.
The announcement follows a similar move from Intel, which earlier this year revealed plans to invest up to $100B to build a chip manufacturing facility in Ohio. Qualcomm and GlobalFoundries also announced a new partnership, which includes a $4.2B investment in manufacturing chips.
The companies have said they plan to leverage funds from the CHIPS-plus act, a $280B research and development package that includes more than $50B to support US semiconductor manufacturing. President Joe Biden signed the package into law yesterday.
" TSMC is already expanding internationally. It has committed $40 billion to build a chip factory in the U.S. state of Arizona, and is also building one in Japan and considering a second one there.
“The Arizona factory, among the largest foreign investments in U.S. history, will start production in 2024, using advanced 5-nanometre technology. Construction was announced after the U.S. passed a law granting $53 billion in subsidies and tax credits for the chips industry.”
“JCs” have learned to sit on their hands and do nothing, until Uncle Sugar throws money at them, for them to do the things they should do in their normal course of business, like advancing their technology and improving the productivity of their factories.
Germany is going through this with TSMC right now. Building in Germany costs more. So without subsidies they will go elsewhere. To the highest bidder?
This is very much a part of the modern business community. Real estate developers routinely get incentives often of scaled back property taxes, sometimes with special sales taxes to help pay for traffic signals and turn lanes in roads for better access.
Probably a factor in decisions by companies like Tesla, Boeing, Caterpillar, and Amazon to move their corporate headquarters.
They have not been ‘doing nothing.’ They’ve been building lots of chip fabs, just not in the locations that we would like - and which are vulnerable to supply chain fiascos or international politics.
So we enough prodding (read: money) they have agreed to put up some factories here. This is not unusual; local governments have been sweetening deals for local developers for decades. Some programs began in the 1930’s when some Southern state governments tried to woo factories and industries south by offering special incentives to relocate or open new facilities there. Nothing new there.
Which would seem to show faulty risk assessment by the “JCs”.
This is true, and the “jobs” bar got lower and lower, as time went on. I remember when Kalamazoo gave Beach Products a big stack of tax breaks to “retain jobs”, rather than create new ones. So the company took the handout, then closed a few years later anyway.