WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed a $280 billion bipartisan bill to boost domestic high-tech manufacturing, part of his administration’s push to boost U.S. competitiveness over China.
Flanked by scores of lawmakers, union officials, local politicians and business leaders, Biden feted the legislation, a core part of his economic agenda that will incentivize investments in the American semiconductor industry in an effort to ease U.S. reliance on overseas supply chains for critical, cutting-edge goods.
“The future of the chip industry is going to be made in America,” Biden said in a sweltering Rose Garden ceremony Tuesday, referring to the diminutive devices that power everything from smartphones to computers to automobiles. The legislation sets aside $52 billion specifically to bolster the U.S. computer chip sector.
The bill has been more than a year in the making, but finally cleared both chambers of Congress late last month with significant bipartisan margins. The Senate passed it 64-33, with 17 GOP senators supporting it, while the House quickly followed suit with a 243-187 vote that included 24 House Republicans in favor, even though party leaders began urging their ranks to vote against it after Democrats advanced a separate sweeping bill focused on climate and health care.
The White House sought Tuesday to begin selling the immediate impacts of the semiconductor measure, noting that Micron, a leading U.S. chip manufacturer, will announce a $40 billion plan to boost domestic production of memory chips, while Qualcomm and GlobalFoundries will unveil a $4.2 billion expansion of an upstate New York chip plant.