[WASHINGTON] US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is looking into the federal government taking equity stakes in computer chip manufacturers that receive Chips Act funding to build factories in the country, two sources said.
Expanding on a plan to receive an equity stake in Intel in exchange for cash grants, a White House official and a source familiar with the situation said that Lutnick is exploring how the US can receive equity stakes in exchange for Chips Act funding for companies such as Micron, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Samsung. Much of the funding has not yet been dispersed.
Aside from Intel, memory chipmaker Micron is the biggest US recipient of Chips Act cash. TSMC declined to comment. Micron, Samsung and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on Tuesday that Lutnick was working on a deal with Intel to take a 10 per cent government stake.
“The president wants to put America’s needs first, both from a national security and economic perspective, and it’s a creative idea that has never been done before,” she told reporters.
While Lutnick said earlier on CNBC that the US does not want to tell Intel how to run its operations, any investment would be unprecedented and ramps up a new era of US influence on the big companies. In the past, the US has taken stakes in companies to provide cash and build confidence in times of economic upheaval and uncertainty.
In a similar move earlier this year, Trump approved Nippon Steel’s purchase of US Steel after being promised a “golden share” that would prevent the companies from reducing or delaying promised investments, transferring production or jobs outside the US, or closing or idling plants before certain time frames, without the president’s consent.
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The two sources said that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is also involved in the Chips Act discussions, but that Lutnick is driving the process. The Commerce Department oversees the US$52.7 billion Chips Act, formally known as the Chips and Science Act. The act provides funding for research and grants for building chip plants in the US.
Lutnick has been pushing the equity idea, the sources said, adding that Trump likes the idea.
The US Commerce Department late last year finalised subsidies of US$4.75 billion for Samsung, US$6.2 billion for Micron and US$6.6 billion for TSMC to produce semiconductors in the US.
In June, Lutnick said that the department was re-negotiating some of former president Joe Biden’s grants to semiconductor firms, calling them “overly generous”. He noted at the time that Micron offered to increase its spending on chip plants in the US. REUTERS
