US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Wednesday said that the US government has been reworking agreements forged with semiconductor makers under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act to secure what he called better terms aimed at generating additional domestic investment.
“Are we renegotiating? Absolutely, for the benefit of the American taxpayer, for sure,” Lutnick said at a meeting of the US Senate Appropriations Committee. “We’re getting more value for the same dollars.”
Lutnick cited the decision in March by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), a recipient of US$6.6 billion in grants, to boost its US investment commitment. The company is adding US$100 billion to a previous US$65 billion pledge, but without any additional funding from the US government, he said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
US President Donald Trump has urged the US Congress to repeal the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act that was a centerpiece of former US president Joe Biden’s domestic agenda, although Republican and Democratic lawmakers have little desire to revoke a bipartisan law promising US$52 billion in subsidies. Lutnick has previously signaled that the commerce department might withhold grants to press companies to follow in TSMC’s footsteps and expand their planned domestic semiconductor projects.
During his nearly two-hour appearance before the committee, Lutnick addressed a range of issues essential to the semiconductor industry, including the administration’s push to bring to the US more chips-related investment.
He defended artificial intelligence (AI) deals with the United Arab Emirates unveiled last month during Trump’s trip to the Middle East, saying the accords were crafted to spur complementary levels of spending in the US.
The Trump administration is moving toward negotiating individual deals with nations while maintaining security guarantees designed to prevent Chinese companies from obtaining AI chips.
“Our view is we are going to allow our allies to buy AI chips, provided they’re run by an approved American data center operator, and the cloud that touches that data center is an approved American operator,” Lutnick said.
The US has moved to pressure allies against adopting Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) new Ascend chip, warning that any use risked breaching export controls imposed by Washington.
The commerce department last month said that it was to warn people about “the potential consequences of allowing US AI chips to be used for training and inference of Chinese AI models.”
Lutnick said that China still lacks the capability to produce high volumes of sophisticated semiconductors.
He estimated that China could probably produce about 200,000 advanced chips, like the kind used to train AI services or run smartphones, a tiny number compared with demand.
“They say they are making them and they are not,” he said.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS