The USA and Europe are spending $/€ billions to re-establish a thriving semiconductor manufacturing industry after decades of underfunding and a self-defeating focus on driving manufacturing abroad in the pursuit of short-term profit.
Some forward-thinking semiconductor vendors, such as Infineon, have continued to invest in “local” manufacturing and it is now able to accelerate its fab business utilizing some of the €43 billion made available through the European Chips Act.
I am pleased to see this investment happening, it is vital that semiconductor manufacturing is spread across the world, rather than being concentrated in a few countries. It provides well-paid, technical jobs and enables the industry to be much more resilient to issues that can arise from such things as global pandemics. My only concern is whether all this taxpayer’s money is going to be spent wisely.
