Press Releases

Today, Congressman Salud Carbajal helped send key pieces of his Inflation Action Plan to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law; including provisions to invest in U.S. manufacturing of semiconductors, which will help lower the costs of everyday items from cars and household appliances, and create good-paying technology jobs by ensuring that next-generation technologies are made in America.

The bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which passed the House today by vote of 243 to 187, invests $52 billion in domestic chip production, strengthen research and development through the National Science Foundation, support regional tech hubs to create jobs and spur innovation in new parts of the country, diversify our STEM workforce, and expand access to American-made 5G technology.

“Semiconductors are critical pieces of a wide range of goods that Americans rely on every day—and as inflation has struck the price of cars, appliances, and other goods, it’s important to recognize a key reason for such dramatic price increases: we aren’t making these chips in America anymore,” said Congressman Carbajal. “Not only did the U.S. pioneer the microchip and the computing power that now powers our daily lives, we used to have almost 40% of the global semiconductor market. Now, we’ve become reliant on almost 90% of our semiconductors from foreign sources, putting our supply chains and national security at constant risk—as well as forcing additional costs on American families who need these goods when supply chains have failed. That’s why the CHIPs and Science Act was a part of my Inflation Action Plan—lowering costs for these goods can’t happen if their central components have to come from far-off nations.”

Recent supply chain disruptions have highlighted America’s reliance on foreign-made semiconductors, as the United States has seen its domestic manufacturing capacity for these hi-tech components decrease from more than one third to only 12% of the global market over the past 20 years.

Included in the $52 billion for investments in domestic semiconductor manufacturing is a new tax credit to incentivize companies to invest in production and guardrails to prevent private companies from using these investments to fund stock buybacks or dividends.

The CHIPS and Science Act is projected to create 100,000 new jobs building hi-tech manufacturing facilities in the United States, and help increase America’s STEM workforce to fill new R&D jobs across the nation.

More information on the CHIPS and Science Act can be found here.

This bill has been a key priority for Carbajal and his colleagues in the New Democrat Coalition, who made reshoring American semiconductor manufacturing a key plank of their Inflation Action Plan.

The CHIPS and Science Act also contains funds to encourage research and innovation in energy and climate studies through the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies: including five years of funding for public-private research into ocean acidification—a climate threat that Carbajal has sought to address through his bipartisan Ocean Acidification Research Partnership Act.

With passage by the Senate earlier this week, the measure now heads to President Joe Biden and is expected to be signed into law in the coming days.