Today when I was just reading over the general news before I started work I wanted to slam my head into a desk when I read that the Biden Admin was once again looking to give another semiconductor (Chip) manufacturer billions to build new plants in the US. Since my Committee was the lead Committee for the Chips and Science Act I have always had a soft spot for it as my coworkers worked so hard to craft a piece of legislation that was not just billions being given to these huge companies.
That being I am officially starting to get sick and tired of hearing these awards being announced because there is an issue that companies who are winning these awards are continuing to face time and time again. It doesn't matter where they are either as the plants in Texas, Wisconsin, and Arizona have all run into the same issue that the Biden Admin refuses to acknowledge or attempt to fix.
The US has a huge skilled labor shortage when it comes to this industry and the systems required.
Since advanced Chip manufacturing has been offshored for decades now no matter how much money the Biden Admin offers or throws at it there is not the workforce in the US that is required to build these plants as quickly as the Admin wants. Not only that but within these grants companies are facing issues because of the requirements of who they hire and the various other paperwork that has to be submitted as part of the DEI part of the law (section 19).
We have even seen articles starting to come out point at this like this Hill article which just flat out says that DEI has killed the Chips act along with others like this one by The New York Times further showing that there is an issue.
On one hand, the US is talking about how they need these chips here ASAP but they also want US labor involved. Typically that would be fine but US labor has no idea how these systems work and at the TSMC plant in Ariznoia they flew 500 of their workers from Taiwan to help build the factory which outraged the local labor markets since TSMC plainly stated they are not the skilled workforce required. This isn't crazy rocket science you can either have these facilities rapidly built or you can spend years training people to be able to build these facilities and make the chips. You cannot have both so it blows my mind how the Admin today has announced an additional $6.5 billion to TSMC for their Arizona plants and have them be available for an additional $5 billion. Of the $6.5 billion a whopping $50 million is going to workforce development... That is it. It blows my mind that the Admin has yet to realize this is not working and instead continues to sink billions into these companies to bring them here without seemingly having an actual thought-through plan.
I cannot find a single company that has not pushed it expected start date for their facilities. Initially, most of them were supposed to start in 2025 but have said that they will not start then but also have not provided a timeline. Again as someone who helped with this bill, it is beyond my wildest dreams that the Admin would drop the ball this bad. We all knew we did not have the workforce and we knew it would take time. It was known we were going to need to bring over the people that understood these systems however the Admin has made it a nightmare for these companies to do what they need to do to actually onshore this critical tech.