Agencies
washington
If the Biden administration had its way, far more electronic chips would be made in factories in, say, Texas or Arizona.
They would then be shipped to partner countries, such as Costa Rica, Vietnam or Kenya, for final assembly and sent out into the world to run everything from refrigerators to supercomputers.
Those places may not be the first that come to mind when people think of semiconductors. But administration officials are trying to transform the world’s chip supply chain and are negotiating intensely to do so.
The core elements of the plan include getting foreign companies to invest in chipmaking in the United States and finding other countries to set up factories to finish the work. Officials and researchers in Washington call it part of the new "chip diplomacy”.
The Biden administration argues that producing more of the tiny brains of electronic devices in the US will help make the country more prosperous and secure.
President Joe Biden boasted about his efforts in his interview on July 5 with ABC News, during which he said he managed to get South Korea to invest billions of dollars in chipmaking in the US.
But a key part of the strategy is unfolding outside America’s borders, where the administration is trying to work with partners to ensure that investments in the US are more durable. If the nascent effort progresses, it may help the administration meet some of its broad strategic goals.
It wants to blunt security concerns involving China, which is growing its chip manufacturing while making threats against Taiwan, a global centre of chip technology. And it wants to lower the risks of disruptions to the chip supply chain – risks that became evident during the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, both of which threw global shipping and manufacturing into turmoil.
"The focus has been to do our best to expand the capacity in a diverse set of countries to make those global supply chains more resilient,” said Professor Ramin Toloui.