US Chip Industry Split Over CHIPS Act Benefits To Intel (reuters.com) 71
Several U.S. semiconductor firms are deliberating whether to oppose a package of chip industry subsidies if the final language of the legislation awaiting a vote in the Senate disproportionately benefits manufacturers like Intel, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. From the report: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has told lawmakers that a vote could come as early as Tuesday on a slimmed-down set of bills to bolster the U.S. computer chip industry, after Democratic lawmakers cleaved them from a larger, more contentious bill. The bills are aimed at making the U.S. more competitive against a rising China, whose chip industry has grown rapidly over the last five years to account for almost 10% of global sales. The measures include $52 billion in subsidies and an investment tax credit to boost U.S. manufacturing. The bills have bipartisan support, though Republicans may vote against the chip measures unless Democrats give up plans to try to push through unrelated spending bills that Republicans oppose. But a rift is emerging within the chip industry itself, with some players concerned the final language of the legislation could provide disproportionate support to manufacturers like Intel while doing little to support other chip makers like Advanced Micro Devices, Qualcomm and Nvidia.
You were warned (Score:2)
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What communist countries? You only mentioned China. It's not Communist, it's just hard authoritarian.
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Don't confuse the people here. "Communist" is to them what "gay" is to the average 12 year old: Something they don't really understand but use as a substitute for "I don't like it".
Re:You were warned (Score:4, Insightful)
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So, I'm not aware of any human being who ever lived that could be classified as "to the right of Pol Pot."
The second half of the fascism definition (Score:2)
> Violent dictatorship under any pretext falls completely under the label of "fascism."
People do use the word "fascist" without having any idea what it means. Often they aren't even aware that the Fascisti was a specific group of people. Which is like calling something "Republicanism" and not realizing that the Republicans are in fact a specific political party. Yes,fascism is a type of dictatorship. It does not mean the same thing as "dictatorship" though. It's a specific type.
Many dictatorships are ess
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Fascism is dictatorial power *based on the idea of putting the country above the individual*.
No "ideas" whatsoever are involved in Fascism: It begins and ends with nihilism. The personal power to destroy others for any reason and without consequence is the only motive.
Nationalist and racist rhetoric is favored only because people who are convinced by such things tend to be stupid and easy to dominate, but fascists will say other things when it suits them.
Re: You were warned (Score:2)
that's good American fascism though. the danger is from un-American fascism cloaked in not-fascism, which means anything foreign, apart from actual fascism which is okay as long as it support patriots here in America. the only good globalism is a globe at war.
all clear? good. get with the program commie.
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Used to be that way in the 90s. Now we finally have the kind of assholes again that deserve that designation so we can point out to the relevant people what a real Fascist looks like.
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Why do I never have points when I really want to upvote something?
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Vanguardism in the one party system, especially in party leadership elections, is a key aspect of Leninism and a property deeply ingrained in the CCP today. It's not unusual for one a party government that adhere to Marxism–Leninism principles to also be deeply authoritarian. Communism (as we see it today) and authoritarianism aren't contradictory. It's kind of a requirement if you want to bind other members of the party to decisions made through democratic centralism, and these governments always (I'
Who really benefits (Score:1)
Re:Who really benefits (Score:4, Insightful)
Pelosi's husband just sold Apple and Visa and bought Nvidia. Sheesh, if you're gonna troll, get your facts straight.
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Sir, this here is hyperbole, facts is down the corridor to the left.
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I didn't come here for facts. I came here for an argument.
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Still the wrong door, this here is abuse.
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Top 10 Traders: Here were the 10 best trading members of Congress in order of performance:
Austin Scott (Republican), U.S. Representative since 2011, Georgia
Brian Mast (Republican), U.S. Representative since 2017, Florida
French Hill (Republican), U.S. Representative since 2015, Arkansas
John Curt
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Seems unlikely that we'll get the legislature to make laws against themselves. It's insider trading for any of us normal schmucks and usually for state and local politicians. But somehow if you're working in D.C. the laws don't apply to you. I hope one day Congress accidentally authorizes the SEC to go after congressional members.
how do you get the industry to build here ? (Score:4, Interesting)
We really need to boster domestic chip manufacturing and yet, this bill already stinks and the fact that it favors intel is not surprising at all.
a bunch of lawyers who know nothing about technology probably let Intel write the pertinent sections.
The industry is just using this to blackmail Americans for free money.
That doesn't mean there isn't a problem here, but i sure would like to know how we can possibly solve it.
late stage capitalism indeed.
the particularly worrying thing is that they will end up with ths money, pour it into stock buybacks and executive bonuses and that will be the end of it.
i hope congress is hiring an army of inspector generals to audit this shit with a microscope
Re: how do you get the industry to build here ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the bill is aimed at supporting manufacturing. None of the other concerned companies actually do any manufacturing, in fact they love to advertise the fact that they're fabless specifically because wall street loves to hear the word fabless, because wall street knows just how low margin of a business semiconductor fabrication really is.
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The bill is aimed at making money for certain people, including congresscritters who have big piles of Intel stock. Intel can afford to build fabs here, so there's no reason why they should be given our money to do so. This is a massive market, and if we were to protect income for our citizens it might remain so, and in such a case we could reasonably use tariffs to incentivize national production. The arguably unfair chicken tax has unarguably incentivized production of pickups in the USA by foreign and do
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The margins are very high on semiconductor fabrication. The problem is capital expenditures and non-recurring effort, so you have to be a high-volume manufacturer.
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Definitely benefits Nvidia. Pelosi ensures it (Score:3)
Pelosi's husband just bought millions of dollars of Nvidia stock. I'd say it's a safe bet Pelosi is going to protect their investment and make sure this is good for Nvidia. Given she and her husband are literally owners of Nvidia.
Manufacturers vs "Makers" (Score:5, Insightful)
Sleep in the bed you made (Score:4, Insightful)
America is allergic to anything that might be construed as "nationalizing" industry no matter to what degree.
The article itself lays out that only a few US based forms (Intel, Texas Instruments, Micro) are in the business of building fabs to manufacture their own chips. NVidia, AMD and Qualcomm are all successful companies but they did not care to make the investment in fabs and it was more profitable for them to outsource it. Now they can get mad all they want and lose out due to their profit focused motives. AMD especially as they sold off Global Foundries and if they still owned it they would likely get a piece of this pie today.
America does this type of thing with subsidies, that's just what is politically viable. I would greatly prefer the public building and owning domestic fabs and reserving them for strategic use and leasing out excess capacity to these companies as they would like to pay for it. But that just won't fly with many of the same people who also complain about corporate subsidies ironically.
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We don't like any new nationalization. We apparently tolerate and even defend the nationalization that is already in place, probably because most people aren't aware of it.
Airport security is now ran by the TSA instead of contractors hired by the airport management. That's the most obvious nationalization we have today.
Savings and loans bailouts in the 1989, and financial bailouts in 2008. They were more controlled and temporary. It's temporary nationalization. Same for many of the railroads throughout the
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The core issue is that for national security reasons we DO need to be able to mass produce ICs on state-of-the-process technology domestically. That is important.
The problem is paying Intel (and anyone else) to build fabs here does not do anything to address the systemic forces that drove it all over seas in the first place. So we give a bunch of money away to an industry, wait 5-10 years for the capacity to really come online and then a decade or so after that the stuff is obsoleted and those same compan
Why do we need this bill? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever since COVID, we've seen a shortage of microchips.
This shortage is not resolving itself.
We have the people and skills here in this country to build these fabs (for the most part, it's not like we're North Korea).
Shouldn't there be sufficient economic incentive for Intel, TMSC, etc etc to JUST DO THIS?
Why do we have to give them a dollar of tax payer money?
Shouldn't these companies by PAYING taxes?
And compared to many of you I assure you I'm on the radical right (not really, but anybody who isn't aligned with Bernie, AOC, etc is radical right these days).
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Shouldn't there be sufficient economic incentive for Intel, TMSC, etc etc to JUST DO THIS?
Except maybe for Intel, it's been cheaper for them to just farm this work to TSMC, so from a purely profit based perspective, no there is no economic incentive. In the face of that you have to create it by subsidies or taxation policy or domestic policy, especially now where its a matter of national and economic security.
Just like how it was cheaper for the automakers to keep building chips on decades old processes than update it to keep pace with fab capacity but they took the more profitable route.
I don'
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The only reason I can see to justify such a bill, is for the bill to ensure domestic manufacturing capacity exists to some extent. The key word being domestic. The economic incentive as you state clearly exists to expand fab capacity, but the question is where those fabs will be built.
If we don't care where they are built, then this bill is pointless. If the government wants to intervene and better protect against, say, China military going into Taiwan, then it may make sense to do a 'many-strings-attached
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I agree with you but you are talking about putting our nations needs ahead of globalist profits. I think we both realize our entire government is all about supporting the needs of the global corporations and their profits.
The only good thing about producing stuff locally is at least it is available but might be super expensive because of the global market.
It's why we are a net exporter of energy but just look at the price at the pump. That's really only good for stock holders and executives getting nice bon
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Shouldn't there be sufficient economic incentive for Intel, TMSC [ sic ], etc etc to JUST DO THIS?
There is. That is why TSMC is building new plants! ...in Singapore... and Japan.
I suspect US labor prices are too expensive when compared to Asia. FoxConn even constructed a vacant building [cnn.com] just to... get tax credits and make politicians like them?
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Is the labour issue still relevant though?
I thought the chip manufacturing process has become highly automated and very few humans are needed for hands on work. I assume the actual design of the chips is very dependent on human labour but how much human labour actually goes into the manufacturing process?
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On the other hand, shipping jobs overseas has gutted our middle class, as the benefits of productivity gains have gone to lifting those in poorer countries out of poverty.
By the way, there are some chip fabricati
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"It's cheaper to produce chips overseas. "
The cost of labor per die is very low. It's more important to have high-skill workers in the fabs than to have cheap workers. For example, Intel has fabs in the US, Ireland, and Israel.
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Shouldn't there be sufficient economic incentive for Intel, TMSC, etc etc to JUST DO THIS?
Why would anyone increase production when they can charge more per unit? There is the classic supply-demand curve where maximum profit is not at maximum units produced but somewhere below where the curve meats maximum demand.
We're seeing record profits for oil companies despite global shortages for natural gas and crude. High prices for gas translates into profits for US refineries even through the crude prices are high. Moving lower volume of more expensive fuel is a huge benefit to a refinery. They take a
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You are re confusing profits and revenues. Oil companies are seeing top revenues and posting massive losses. Transporting oil halfway across the world isn't cost effective, but it is a great equalizer to foreign production. Hence oil companies are seeing low to no profits, while hostile states like Pakistan, Saudi-Arabia, Iran and Russia are seeing massive income streams.
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Huh? Oil companies have been posting record profits, Exxon for example, I'll let you pick your favourite source, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=exxo... [duckduckgo.com]. Basically doubling their profits from last year, even with the big write off from exiting Russia.
Pick most any large oil company and the story is the same. large profits, being used for bonuses and stock buybacks.
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Without even looking, you're looking at a single quarterly profit, not at year-over-year.
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Now there's the spirit, ignore that the year after year gross profits are higher then the single quarter profit by refusing to look. For net profits, if you ignore the pandemic, they're pretty good too. There was a hit due to the pandemic and people choosing to stay home
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We knew this was coming for years, for years people told us that if China strangles shipping, there will be hell to pay.
Intel etc is setting up fabs in the US again, but it doesn't take 2 years to fix.
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Intel etc is setting up fabs in the US again, but it doesn't take 2 years to fix.
M/quote>
No it doesn't take two years to fix. I takes longer. Just building the plant can take more than two years then you have to ramp up production which can take another 6 months to a year.
"Rugs, Chickens, and Automobiles" (Score:3)
UMC/Mediatek exists because RCA engaged in a technology-sharing agreement with the Taiwan government, before RCA management attempted to become a conglomerate. TSMC actually got later technology from Erickson.
RCA bought Banquet Foods, AVIS, and a carpet company. The resulting distraction ended their semicondutor division, and all the patents were sold to UMC.
Is the United States actually capable of producing a focused semiconductor company, that doesn't try to build an Itanium?
I have my doubts.
Why not simple defense mandate? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's a form of corporate welfare too.
But the big thing is because the military has been eclipsed by the consumer electronics market. Back when the military was spending $500 for a toilet seat and $1000 for a wrench, sure they could keep chip fabs going.
These days though, the latest and greatest chips are not available because it costs 10s to 100s of billions to set up a fab, and the military just isn't bi
welfare queens (Score:2)
The welfare queens are circling (Score:2)
What these companies are really saying is the U.S. taxpayer isn't being forced to hand over more money to them.
As everyone on here should know, these plants are only good for a few years. Their depreciation is written off exceptionally fast which positively affects these company's bottom lines. So it's a double whammy. The U.S. taxpayer has the privilege of handing over their money at gunpoint to private industry, and these same companies go about reducing even further what little taxes they pay.
Then, a f
Freemarket Religion (Score:1)
This sick twisted religion of the "Invisible hand of the market" that dominates 1 party and influences the other is going to wreck the country with their ideological extremism. Their Christian fascist wing won't be the reason the economy fails but it'll be what people notice most.
US corps only exist due to the legal powers afforded by the US government and they can be forced to build within the nation, hire minorities, or whatever the government demands of them. But we won't dare boss them around anymore
Re: Freemarket Religion (Score:2)
Have you not heard? Corporations are people too! Any regulations are akin to slavery. /s
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Intel doesn't have any taxes to reduce paying, but they'll certainly take billions from refundable R&D tax credits...
It is really a triple whammy... The taxpayer foots the bill to the tune of billions which only enables Intel to avoid further billions in taxes. So every dollar the taxpayer spends results in the loss of two dollars in tax revenue.
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China trade shock (Score:2)
Capitalism on the way up, socialism on the way down.
Disproportionate to what? (Score:2)
Not that I am favoring giving rich companies government subsidies, but I’m tired of hearing the term “disproportionate” everywhere I look without context. Disproportionate to what? The term means nothing without a comparison. In the end the answer is usually “disproportionate to what I personally believe it should be”.
Typical foolishness (Score:2)
The top-tier chip companies shouldn't be the ones getting the lion's share of the money. It's not the main processors that we need more of. What we need are fabs for all the glue logic chips that are using older fab processes. Besides, Intel hasn't been delivering on decent processors for years.
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What is Pelosi Doing? (Score:2)
What is Pelosi doing? If she is buying Intel Stock then yes, if she is buying all chip makers or bear indexes then no.
Her trading oddly predicts policy actions.
CHIPS finances semiconductor fabs in US and China (Score:2)
https://twitter.com/matthewsto... [twitter.com]
Thank you INTEL
About nodes? (Score:2)
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There are plenty of also-ran fabs in the United States that Intel has mowed down over the years that muddle along with low-margin contracts. And yes they aren't going to attempt sub-7nm or even 7nm nodes (or to put it more succinctly, anything vaguely competitive with TSMC N7, Samsung 5LPE, or Intel 10ESF).
If we were serious about protecting silicon production in the United States, a good amount of money would be flowing to those fabs to help them catch up to Intel. The Pentagon might also step in and for
This is about manufacturing jobs (Score:1)