The U.S. government should make a sizable investment in the semiconductor industry because the nation can't afford to fall behind China in producing chips, two Minnesotans in Congress said Tuesday in a visit to the state's largest chipmaking plant.
"When you look at something as critical as semiconductors, we want to have it made in America," Sen. Amy Klobuchar said after an hour-long tour at SkyWater Technology in Bloomington.
A measure due for a Senate vote next week represents the largest government outreach to the chip industry since the 1980s. Among its provisions is $49.5 billion over five years to help chipmakers and other technology firms, and $10 billion in annual spending over five years on at least 10 regional technology hubs.
Klobuchar and Rep. Dean Phillips, who also attended the event at SkyWater Technology's plant in Bloomington, said they will seek to make Minnesota one of the hubs.
"It's not just California, not just New York and not just Arizona in the case of semiconductors," Klobuchar said. "It's also places like Minnesota."
The growing competitiveness of China's chip industry, along with its government's target to lead several high-tech sectors, became a strategic priority for the federal government during the Trump administration, which imposed export controls on some chipmaking equipment and chips.
As well, the pandemic demonstrated that, in several industries, the U.S. was critically short of products. "We have ceded too much [to other countries] and now is the time to get back and lead," Phillips said.
With the auto industry and others forced to cut back on work in recent months because of backlogged production at chip plants, President Joe Biden and congressional leaders in both parties have proposed steps the government can take to bolster chip manufacturing in the U.S. The country has lost market share in chip production to South Korea, Taiwan and other Asian countries since the 1990s.
