The Biden administration is providing $162 million to Microchip Technology to support the domestic production of computer chips — the second funding announcement tied to a 2022 law designed to revive U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.
The incentives include $90 million to improve a plant in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and $72 million to expand a factory in Gresham, Oregon, the Commerce Department said. The investments would enable Microchip Technology to triple its domestic production and reduce its dependence on foreign factories.
Much of the money would fund the making of microcontrollers, which are used by the military as well as in autos, household appliances and medical devices. Government officials said they expected the investments to create 700 construction and manufacturing jobs over the next decade.
I’m glad you asked. The Soviet Union was famous for industrial policy. Or the government controlling what gets created and produced. It’s basically the reason why we say free markets are better and that we can’t use industrial policy to catch up.
The original Lada was famous for being the prime example of this. While western nations were driving highly advanced cars, the Lada was incredibly primitive. It didn’t have airbags, or anti-lock breaking or any safety features. Basically they were rolling death traps. Btw, Iranian cars are basically at this state and are also created with government control. The reason is, industrial policy doesn’t focus on what’s good for the market, but the demands of politicians. They saw the Lada could drive and that’s good enough and didn’t invest more into it since there were too many other demands. This happened to basically all soviet industries causing them to fall far far behind.
But the Lada is just an example. There are many other examples like the Russian Aerospace industry, or the Japanese Aerospace industry, or India’s chip fabs.
Now, that isn’t to say I disagreed with the chip act initially. China’s proven you can stimulate markets as long as you don’t get involved in the actual production. Basically China had a big chip fund and spread it across both large and small organizations, but most importantly allowing those who couldn’t compete to go bankrupt. That’s why there were so many reports about over 1,000 chip companies bankrupting in China last year. But it also produced Huawei’s new chip. You can’t pick winners and losers, you need to let the market decide. Which I thought initially what Biden would do. I also knew 50 billion wouldn’t be enough, but I thought it would be a start. Instead, we’re seeing Biden pick winners and losers. This will lead to bad outcomes.