Vivek Ramaswamy criticized the CHIPS Act because of course he did… It’s only natural for Ramaswamy and Musk to lash out at everything and anything that offends their sense of intellectual superiority or authority.
The Biden Administration wants to disburse the funds given to it in the CHIPS Act and is doing so… it is wrapping things up. And that has apparently offended the DOGE. That’s what’s happening.
Vivek Ramaswamy took to X Tuesday to criticize the Biden administration’s push to get $50 billion in chipmaking subsidies signed and awarded before President-elect Donald Trump takes power in January.
“This is highly inappropriate: they’re accelerating spending ahead of the transition of power,” Ramaswamy said, linking to a POLITICO interview with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo where she discussed her remaining work to implement the CHIPS and Science Act.
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Ramaswamy announced Monday night that he and Elon Musk’s new “Department of Government Efficiency” will review every last-minute contract rolled out under the CHIPS Act, and another Biden administration spending initiative, the Inflation Reduction Act. Ramaswamy said he will also recommend that inspectors general scrutinize the spending.
Trump has derided the CHIPS Act as “so bad,” arguing that tariffs would have been a better approach to incentivize domestic manufacturing. But he has yet to suggest any explicit changes to the law’s implementation.
And there it is.
They’re going to “review” the CHIPS Act transactions, as if the CHIPS Act is some kind of Big Government scheme and they’re riding in to save the citizens from it. It is not a scheme and it is shortsighted, ignorant, and a threat to the long term security of this nation to hinder the CHIPS Act in any way.
The United States semiconductor ecosystem absolutely requires subsidies on all fronts, just like other nations are doing for their semiconductor ecosystems. China and Taiwan are out there babying their companies while America becomes a semiconductor desert.
United States semiconductor firms cannot compete with companies that have been made national priorities like SMIC and TSMC. They just can’t. Both TSMC and SMIC have a guiding light, reasons to push forward beyond just profit, and can plan and invest over the long term. Companies like Intel have absolutely failed to do that. Leaving America with a bunch of fabless companies that can lose absolutely everything with a single earthquake in Taiwan. 40% of the entire world’s fab capacity sits in Taiwan.
US firms need help. The United States needs all kinds of fabs to produce all kinds of chips for all kinds of electronics. We need a full on ecosystem. The closest thing we’ve got to that is Intel and Intel sucks. They just do. And yet they’re our main domestic fabricator of semiconductors. They’re too big to fail and yet the government is allowing them to fail. The CHIPS Act was a tiny lifeline to keep the tiniest fraction of a healthy ecosystem alive.
The United States cannot continue to depend on an island prone to earthquakes and permanently under threat of invasion for semiconductors and cannot continue to rely on a totalitarian state for electronics.
These are points Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy don’t seem to understand. We don’t need reviews of the CHIPS Act… we need a CHIPS Act II and an Electronics Act. America needs to get its shit together and that will require direct government assistance. Tariffs as an incentive to manufacture in the United States is a joke.