WASHINGTON :The U.S. House of Representatives will soon introduce a bill to increase U.S. competitiveness with China and boost federal spending on semiconductors, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Friday as the Biden administration seeks to boost domestic chip production.
“The House will soon introduce its competitiveness bill,” she said in a note to Democratic colleagues.
The announcement came just hours after Intel Corp said it would invest more than $20 billion in two new chip-making plants in Ohio in a massive manufacturing project that could benefit from federal funding in the years ahead.
President Joe Biden’s administration is pushing to persuade Congress to approve funding to help boost chip production in the United States, as shortages of the key components used in autos and computers have exacerbated supply chain bottlenecks.
The Senate passed the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act last year, which includes $52 billion to increase U.S. semiconductor production and authorizes $190 billion to strengthen U.S. technology and research to compete with China.
“The House legislation will supercharge our investment in chips, strengthen our supply chain and transform our research capacity, plus many other key provisions,” Pelosi said in a letter to Democratic colleagues.
Biden, in a news conference on Wednesday, said inflation had “everything to do with the supply chain” and that the United States had the capacity to become self-reliant on the computer chips it needed to manufacture automobiles.
Biden plans to tout Intel’s investment Friday at a White House event with the chip company’s CEO Pat Gelsinger and again make the case for congressional action.
Intel’s initial $20 billion investment – the largest in Ohio’s history – on a 1,000-acre site in New Albany will generate 3,000 jobs, Gelsinger said. That could grow to $100 billion with eight total fabrication plants and is the largest investment in Ohio’s history, he told Reuters.
(Reporting by Chris Gallagher; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Alistair Bell)
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