Speaking to a joint session of Congress the President said that the act was a, “horrible, horrible thing,” that had given out billions for relatively little.
"You should get rid of the CHIPS Act and whatever is left over, you should use it to reduce debt,” said Trump.
The CHIPS and Science Act includes $39 billion in subsidies for US semiconductor manufacturing and related components along with $75 billion in government lending authority.
Trump has long been critical of the Act, passed by President Joe Biden, but this was certainly his strongest criticism to date.
By his reckoning the use of tariffs will be enough to convince semiconductor companies to build US factories.
While the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has praised the program, he’s also said that he wanted to review awards that were finalised under Biden which were worth more than $33 billion.
Awards worth billions were made to Samsung Electronics, Intel, TSMC and Micron.
Some officials have expressed concern that Trump could look to invalidate binding grant agreements that were struck by the previous administration.
Only this week TSMC announced plans to make a new $100 billion investment in the United States that involves building five additional chip facilities there in coming years, which many believe may not have happened without the CHIPS Act.
The Trump administration has embarked on a dramatic overhaul of the federal government and as part of that is reviewing all the projects awarded and has already laid off a third of the staff handling the subsidy process.
