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Supreme Court Security Funding Act of 2022

Roll Call Number: 239 | Session Number: 1

The CHIPS Act subsidizes the semiconductor industry to the tune of $76 billion. This bill creates new federal grant programs and does nothing to help American industry compete against China in the long term. As the Wall Street Journal put it earlier this week, “competing with China is the new excuse for corporate welfare.”The American semiconductor industry is going to need much more than a $52 billion subsidy to compete against China’s semiconductor industry. Additionally, Congress is offering a 25% tax credit with an estimated cost of $24 billion over the next 5 years. That’s a total of $76 billion of corporate welfare for one industry. Importantly, the U.S. already leads in chip design (52%) and chip-making equipment (50%). Injecting billions of dollars of corporate welfare into the industry is short-sighted and undercuts free enterprise. Corporate welfare does not make America more competitive; It only increases government dependence. Instead, lawmakers should be looking at reducing the regulatory and tax burdens that drove American businesses offshore in the first place.1