New lobby club of chip and tech companies argues for billions in US investments

Major chip and tech companies have set up a new lobbying organization. All the major chip makers, as well as companies such as Amazon, Apple and Google, are asking the US Congress to pledge $50 billion in investment in the chip industry.

The new lobbying club is called Semiconductors in America Coalition and is made up of members of the American Semiconductor Industry Association and other international tech companies. The 64-member organization writes that the United States’ share of global chip manufacturing capacity has declined from 37 percent in 1990 to 12 percent today.

According to the organization, the decrease is due to substantial subsidies that were offered by governments of other countries for building factories. This puts the US at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to attracting new factories for the production of semiconductors.

The Chips for America Act, the plan set up and approved by the US government last year, is intended to boost chip production on US soil. The aim of that project is to invest 50 billion in local chip production and research. However, that money has not yet been pledged and the lobby club writes in an open letter to the US Congress asking to do so.

The SIAC consists of American chipmakers, such as AMD, Broadcom, Globalfoundries, IBM, Intel, Marvell, Micron, Nvidia, ON Semiconductor, Qualcomm and Western Digital. In addition, the lobby organization is supported by companies such as Amazon, Cisco, Google, HPE and Microsoft. Arm, Infineon, Kioxia, MediaTek, Nikon, NXP, Samsung, SK Hynix and TSMC have also joined. This means that almost the entire global chip industry is represented, with the exception of Chinese companies.