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Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#151

Post by cowtools »

smoldesu wrote: post #64
ParksNet wrote: post #39

Banning Proof of Work cryptocurrencies from being traded on licensed exchanges would achieve the same improvement of chip availability, as well as saving a huge amount of electricity, for $0. I guess sensible measures like this don't boost the share portfolios of politicians' spouses though.

"Sensible measures" like that don't get picked because ultimately all cryptocurrency is a zero-sum game, and getting rid of all of them would save us a lot of time, manhours and wasted Internet conversations. But ideas like that are too sensible, so we give people the freedom to build whatever blockchain-garbage they want, because that's their sovereign choice.

banning cryptocurrency is easier said than done.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#152

Post by CamperBob2 »

lettergram wrote: post #26

I disagree that subsidizing R&D to a few companies is going to make us more competitive. Look at GE or Boeing, it didn’t work out. What works is a free market. Raise import costs on CPUs and you’ll incentivize building in the US and more companies to form. It costs $0 tax dollars and brings in revenue and high paying jobs. Similar to what we did with car manufacturing.

What works is a free market. Raise import costs

Well, which do you want? You can't have both.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#153

Post by kube-system »

lettergram wrote: post #31
Alupis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly, handouts are needed to force/incentivize these companies to build new fabs in the continental US. Otherwise they would have built them under their own gumption by now. When there is no clear benefit for the company to fab chips in the continental US, and a lot of clear negatives (cost, regulations, etc) - you have to do something to outweigh the cons. If the US had been an amazing place to fab chips already,…

Alternatively, you add a 20% tax on CPUs made outside the US. That would incentivize the fans manufactured in the US even if it’s a foreign company.

Depends on how much money the other countries are handing out to build CPUs there.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#154

Post by parentheses »

ren_engineer wrote: post #116
pm90 wrote: post #20

WaPo article, which has more details about the bill and less details about what different “personalities” are saying: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/27/senate-ch... . Overall, it looks great. We absolutely need to fund more semiconductor manufacturing. Losing that ability to China/Taiwan was just a terrible strategic mistake. The US hasn’t lost this battle (over semiconductors) just yet. While curren…

main problem is that we are rewarding companies for being disloyal and offshoring in the first place, now they win again with free money after raking in profits for decades. We should have some funding for smaller companies and R&D but also massive tariffs to force companies to bring manufacturing back

That would slow an already injured economy.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#155

Post by mattnewton »

guelo wrote: post #147
Someone1234 wrote: post #129

It should be noted that the US decided not to extend the universal free school meals program, because it was "too expensive" at $11B. They also stopped the expanded and early payment of family tax credits, causing a double-whammy hit to poor families (then pile on inflation/food prices, and gas prices). But $50B to large monopolistic companies isn't "too expensive," and we can afford that . Unfortunately 52 senators…

Quoted post unavailable.

51 senators could change that rule any time though, it’s just an accidental convention that hasn’t had the best track record imo

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#156

Post by mbostleman »

pm90 wrote: post #20

WaPo article, which has more details about the bill and less details about what different “personalities” are saying: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/27/senate-ch... . Overall, it looks great. We absolutely need to fund more semiconductor manufacturing. Losing that ability to China/Taiwan was just a terrible strategic mistake. The US hasn’t lost this battle (over semiconductors) just yet. While curren…

>>While current manufacturing is indeed dominated by East Asian countries, the vast majority of research still happens in US universities. This legislation allocates more funding for that research…>>

I suspect there’s more to it than this, but to the extent there’s not, this doesn’t make much sense. If the monetization of our research ends up in China’s control, how does it help to fund more research. Apparently research is not the problem, manufacturing is.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#157

Post by faet »

braingenious wrote: post #46
camjohnson26 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nvidia, which they sold today at a large loss.

By “they” are you talking about Paul Pelosi? Can somebody explain how buying stock for $100(1) and selling at $165 causes a loss? I’m not being flippant, it’sa serious question. 1. https://www.businessinsider.com/nancy-pelosi-stock-trades-pa...

>In a periodic transaction report, the senior Democrat disclosed that her husband, financier Paul Pelosi, sold 25,000 shares of Nvidia for about $4.1 million, ending up with a loss of $341,365.

He bought options in July 2021. Basically, he said he'd buy 20k shares stock for X price regardless of the price in the next year. If the stock goes up he can sell the options without having to buy said stock (for a profit). He can also give up what he paid for the options and choose not to buy the shares and they'd expire worthless.

As the stock was below what he bet it would be within a years time he decided to exercise his right to buy the 20k shares rather than lose his initial investment. He then sold, for a loss, but possibly a smaller one than if he just let them expire worthless.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#158

Post by faet »

drexlspivey wrote: post #50
camjohnson26 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nvidia, which they sold today at a large loss.

> Paul Pelosi purchased on June 17, 20,000 shares of Nvidia, a top semiconductor company, worth between $1 million and $5 million, the Daily Caller reported, citing disclosure reports filed by the House speaker. Price on June 17 was $158, right now it’s $178

He bought the options back in summer of 2021. He decided to exercise them rather than let them expire worthless. His price was probably around 180/share.

>In a periodic transaction report, the senior Democrat disclosed that her husband, financier Paul Pelosi, sold 25,000 shares of Nvidia for about $4.1 million, ending up with a loss of $341,365.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#159

Post by jason-phillips »

andrewstuart wrote: post #99

It'll be money wasted. They should be paying out a large sum ONLY on completion, defined as when the first 10 million semiconductors are delivered to commercial customers.

As a side note, that's like a couple of days of production for one fab. A billion chips would be more meaningful in your example.

Re: Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

#160

Post by mechagodzilla »

ren_engineer wrote: post #116
pm90 wrote: post #20

WaPo article, which has more details about the bill and less details about what different “personalities” are saying: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/27/senate-ch... . Overall, it looks great. We absolutely need to fund more semiconductor manufacturing. Losing that ability to China/Taiwan was just a terrible strategic mistake. The US hasn’t lost this battle (over semiconductors) just yet. While curren…

main problem is that we are rewarding companies for being disloyal and offshoring in the first place, now they win again with free money after raking in profits for decades. We should have some funding for smaller companies and R&D but also massive tariffs to force companies to bring manufacturing back

There are basically only 3 close-to-cutting edge foundries left - Intel (American), Samsung (South Korean) and TSMC (Taiwanese), and TSMC is in the lead by quite a bit. We're getting extremely close to the end-game of moore's law, so the lifetime of a <7nm fab is likely to be long, and there are likely to only ever be a handful built because they are absurdly expensive (20+ Billion dollars), particularly if you can't keep them fully utilized. There are no 'smaller companies' with cutting edge fabs, and these aren't really American companies who outsourced and are no bringing them back - Intel has always had a large manufacturing presence in the US, and a large part of this is trying to get foreign companies to 'offshore' fabs to the US rather than continuing to concentrate in south korea / taiwan.
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