AMERICAN CHIPMAKERS account for a third of global semiconductor revenues. They design the world’s most sophisticated microprocessors, which power most smartphones, data centres and, increasingly, artificial-intelligence (AI) models. But neither the American firms nor their Asian contract manufacturers produce any such leading-edge chips in America. Given chips’ centrality to modern economies—and, in the age of AI, to warfighting—that worries policymakers in Washington. Their answer was the CHIPS Act, a $50bn package of subsidies, tax credits and other sweeteners to bring advanced chip manufacturing back to America, which President Joe Biden signed into law on August 9th 2022.
On the surface, the law appears to be having
→ Continue reading at The Economist
