Some of the world’s largest chip buyers, including Apple, Microsoft and Google, join top chip makers such as Intel to form a new lobby group pushing for government subsidies for chip manufacturing.
The newly formed Semiconductors in America Coalition, which also includes Amazon Web Services, said Tuesday it has asked US lawmakers to provide funding for the CHIPS for America Act, for which President Joe Biden has asked Congress to provide $ 50 billion.
“Robust funding of the CHIPS Act would help America build the additional capacity needed to have more resilient supply chains to ensure that critical technologies are there when we need them,” the group said in a letter to the Democratic Party. and Republican leaders in both houses of the US Congress.
A global shortage of chips has hit car makers hard, with Ford Motor Co saying it could cut production in half in the second quarter.
Automotive groups have pressured the Biden government to secure the supply of chips for car factories. But Reuters reported last week that government officials were reluctant to use a national security law to forward computer chips to car manufacturers because it could harm other industries.
The new coalition spans some of those other chip-consuming industries, with members including AT&T, Cisco Systems, General Electric, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Verizon Communications Inc. She warned against government measures to favor a single industry, such as car manufacturers.
“The government should refrain from intervening while the industry works to correct the current supply / demand imbalance causing the deficit,” the group said.
Tech companies such as Apple are also hit by the chip shortage, but much less severely than car manufacturers.
The iPhone maker said last month that in the current quarter ending in June it will lose $ 3 billion to $ 4 billion in sales due to the shortage of chips, but that amounts to just a few percent of the $ 72.9 billion that analysts expect for Apple’s fiscal third quarter. , according to Refinitiv’s earnings estimates.