Arizona congressman defend CHIPS Act as President Trump calls it ‘ridiculous’
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — President Donald Trump lashed out at the CHIPS Act during a meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday, renewing questions about funding for Arizona’s semiconductor industry.
The bill gave the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Intel billions of dollars to invest in Arizona. Still, there are worries that the president might try to claw back the funding already awarded to companies.
“The CHIPS Act was a ridiculous thing because that doesn’t get the thing built, all we did was hand very wealthy companies money,” the president said.
To get an idea of the impact of the CHIPS and Science Act on Arizona, look no further than the sprawling and expanding TSMC campus in north Phoenix. It’s a campus representing the state’s high-tech future rising from the desert.
Democratic Congressman Greg Stanton says it’s largely made possible thanks to the CHIPS Act.
“My fellow members of Congress, they remind me of that basically every single day, that Arizona has done better than every other state in the country,” he said, also taking issue with the president’s comments.
“The president is absolutely wrong,” Stanton said. “The CHIPS and Science Act has created a semiconductor manufacturing boon here in the United States and particularly in Arizona.“ He points to TSMC’s $60 billion investment in north Phoenix and Intel’s $20 billion in new plants being built in Chandler.
“I would argue that the CHIPS Act has been a tremendous success,” said Danny Seiden, president and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “Arizona has benefited disproportionately to other states with the amount of investments that we’ve gotten.”
“We’ve never said that the CHIPS and Science Act couldn’t be better administered, and he (the president) seemed to indicate in the entire context of his remarks that he was pointing to the bureaucracy that came along with it,” Seiden said.
Seiden says eliminating layers of bureaucracy wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. However, moving forward, TSMC and Intel have promised to create 65,000 Arizona jobs.
“This is the most important industry on this planet, the semiconductor industry. Whoever wins this battle to be the dominant entity on semiconductors is going to be globally in the strongest position,” Stanton said.
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