Trump Calls For Repeal Of CHIPS Act In Address To Congress, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Semiconductor Manufacturing Was Returning To The United States

WASHINGTON. Addressing a joint session of Congress on Tuesday evening, President Donald J. Trump called for the repeal of the CHIPS and Science Act, the 2022 law that committed roughly $52 billion to rebuilding semiconductor manufacturing on American soil, resolving the long-standing concern that chip fabrication plants were once again being constructed inside the United States.

"Your CHIPS Act is a horrible, horrible thing," the President said, turning toward Speaker Mike Johnson seated behind him and instructing the Speaker to "get rid of it." Trump added that whatever money remained unspent should be applied to reducing the national debt, a recommendation he delivered roughly 24 hours after appearing at the White House alongside executives from the Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC to celebrate a $100 billion U.S. investment that the CHIPS Act had been written to attract.

The law, signed in 2022, had directed funding toward facilities under construction in Arizona, Ohio, New York, and Texas, in what its authors had described as an effort to ensure that the most advanced components of the modern economy were not manufactured exclusively in regions vulnerable to foreign coercion. Administration officials clarified that the President remained fully committed to bringing chip production home, and would accomplish this by eliminating the program that paid companies to bring chip production home.

The preferred replacement mechanism, sources within the administration explained, is tariffs. "The President believes that if you make imported chips expensive enough, the factories simply appear," said one official, describing a process expected to unfold at an unspecified location over an unspecified period of time. The official added that the new approach carried the additional advantage of not requiring Congress to spend any money, only American consumers.

In the months following the address, the Commerce Department began reviewing, renegotiating, and slow-walking awards that companies had already been promised, while the office responsible for administering the program absorbed staff reductions. Industry analysts noted that the semiconductors at issue are the components inside automobiles, insulin pumps, fighter jets, and the teleprompter from which the President had read his remarks.

At press time, Trump had reaffirmed that the United States must once again build everything for itself, a goal he intended to reach by canceling the law that had been paying Americans to build things.