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Reshoring Semiconductors: Reimagining the North American Chip Industry
Faced with an increasingly aggressive campaign by China to drive the direction of the semiconductor production, politicians and industry groups are pushing for greater investment in the domestic chip manufacturing sector.
Semiconductors are expensive to manufacture and require huge initial investments to bootstrap.
A report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation found that “the increasing expense, complexity and scale required to innovate and manufacture semiconductors means that no single nation or enterprise can go it alone. In the face of challenges from China, allied cooperation in semiconductors is critical.”
Last summer, congress approved the bipartisan Creating Helpful Incentives for Producing Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act. The legislation allocates up to $3 billion to help build and update facilities for “semiconductor fabrication, assembly, testing, advanced packaging, or research and development.”
We may need to reimagine the semiconductor business. Nick Stonnington, managing member of the Stonnington investment group, said that “the U.S. has the potential to be one of the few countries in the world that is essentially self-contained from a manufacturing standpoint. Technology and automation has a huge role to play in this future. Before Covid-19, many workers were afraid that automated technology would cost them their jobs. But since 40 million people have lost their jobs in the pandemic, we have the opportunity to reimagine our workforce with this technology from the ground-up.”
Miranda Lutz, Senior Associate for Global Counsel, wrote that “encouraging North American to become a hub for semiconductors serves multiple purposes for the US government. These policies move a critical industry away from the Asia-Pacific, thereby limiting China’s access to the most cutting-edge chip technology. The US has a national security interest in exerting more control over the microchip sector and supplementary industries such as advanced manufacturing and AI vis-à-vis its strategic competitor China. If executed thoughtfully and strategically, these policies could also bring key allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan closer to the US orbit of influence instead of injecting chaos and unpredictability into a vital industry.”
