US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo yesterday delivered a speech outlining the long-term objectives of the USD$39 billion Chips and Science Act.

• Raimondo said industrial policy is a response to large-scale decline of the US semiconductor industry: “We once manufactured nearly all of the world’s most advanced semiconductors. Today, we manufacture none.”
  
  
• Raimondo said the decline has real consequences for national security: “So many of our defense capabilities... depend on a supply of chips that aren’t currently produced in America.”
  
  
• Raimondo argued that dependence on foreign chips “hurts our economy,” with the global chip shortage a central contributor to core inflation.

Raimondo declared that by 2030 the US will; “design and produce the world’s most advanced chips on our shores,”

• “…have at least two new large-scale clusters of leading-edge logic fabs... built by highly-skilled union labor,”
• “…will develop multiple high-volume advanced packaging facilities, and become a global leader in packaging technologies,”
• “…will also produce advanced memory chips on economically competitive terms;”
• “…[and] will strategically increase its production capacity for the current-generation and mature-node chips most critical to our economic and national security.”