US seeks to avoid duplicating efforts on semiconductors with partners

“We don’t want a race to the bottom,” Mike Schmidt, director of the CHIPS Program Office, told Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal on Bloomberg’s “Odd Lots” podcast on Thursday. “The important thing is that we don’t let the kind of unconstructive competitive dynamics take hold.”

From Asia to Europe, nations are scrambling to lay the foundations for their own chipmaking clusters to safeguard their economies from the disruptions resulting from shortages of semiconductors seen during the pandemic.

Legislation is being passed, engineers trained and locations designated to support the construction of semiconductor fabs, raising concern among some industry analysts that the race for chip autonomy could end up duplicating global supply chains for chips and wasting billions of dollars.

“There’s a risk of these kind of unconstructive dynamics,” Schmidt said. “But there’s also a huge opportunity for us to work with partners and allies in ways that are mutually beneficial.”

Bloomberg

A team of US officials recently visited South Korea, Taiwan and Japan for meetings on the topic while Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo has been raising the issue the directly with foreign leaders, Schmidt said.

It’s also a major component of US consultations with European partners on trade and technology, he said. “We are really, really active in this international dialog.”

In a bid to bolster US technological competitiveness, the US last year enacted the $52 billion Chips and Science Act. The act seeks to facilitate the rebuilding of semiconductor manufacturing hubs across the US and preserve the country’s technological supremacy while countering challenges from China.

The US share of global chip production has slid from 37% to 10% over the last three decades and the government is focused on restoring that advantage, said Todd Fisher, chief investment officer for the Chips program.

The global chip industry is entering an “inflection point” and the US is intent upon being well positioned to manufacture the widest possible range of products, from leading-edge logic chips to memory semiconductors to advanced packaging, Fisher said.

“We want to see all the pieces of the ecosystem, including suppliers come together around those goals,” he said, speaking alongside Schmidt. “That’s how we’re thinking of measuring ourselves.”