The supply shortage of silicon chips has reached an all-time high, and fabs like TSMC simply don’t have enough production facilities to keep up with the incessant demand from the server, PC, and automotive markets. Per a report from CNBC, President Joe Biden plans to review several critically important industries severely hampered by high demand — including the semiconductor industry.
More specifically, Biden wants the U.S. to be competitive with China and lessen its dependency on Chinese production facilities. For the semiconductor industry, this would mean that millions to billions of dollars would need to be spent on new fabs to both keep up with demand and lessen the strain on Chinese resources. Intel already has a number of fabs in operation in Arizona, and TSMC is currently planning to build fabs in the U.S., so it wouldn’t be a far-fetched idea to see significantly more fabs being built domestically.
Biden’s plan will consist of two phases: The first will be a 100-day review process of analyzing a few of the high-priority supply chains, including the semiconductor, high capacity car battery, rare earth metal and medical industries.
The second phase will begin after the 100-day review, which will begin more broad investigations into production for the U.S military, public health, energy, and transportation.
Finally, a year after these two phases occur, the task force responsible for these investigations will submit recommendations to the president on potential strategies to “ensure supply chains are not monopolized.”
This plan will clearly take time, so for now, don’t expect any major changes with the current semiconductor supply struggle.
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