“We don’t want to spend a dollar more than necessary to make these projects happen,” she said.
The requirements will join a growing list of administration efforts to expand the reach of President Biden’s economic policies beyond their primary intent. For instance, administration officials have attached stringent labor standards and “Buy American” provisions to money from a bipartisan infrastructure law.
The Global Race for Computer Chips
Companies that receive chip subsidies to build new plants will be able to use some of the funding to meet the new child care requirement. That could include building company child care centers near construction sites or new plants, paying local child care providers to add capacity at an affordable cost for workers, directly subsidizing workers’ care costs or other, similar steps that would ensure workers have access to care for their children.
Other provisions of the program will encourage companies, universities and other parties to offer more training for American workers, in advanced sciences but also in fields like welding. The program will encourage colleges and universities to triple their graduation of new engineers over the next decade, Ms. Raimondo said in a speech last week, while also offering high-paying jobs to tens of thousands of American workers without four-year college degrees.
Ms. Raimondo outlined an ambitious vision for investing in the United States to build “a self-propelling engine of innovation and production.” The goal of the program, she said, was to create at least two manufacturing clusters for the most cutting-edge chips, as well as factories for older chips. The ultimate aim would be to spur a vibrant semiconductor ecosystem in which every leading global chip company would feel the need to have both research and manufacturing in the United States, she said.
In interviews, Ms. Raimondo said the CHIPS requirements would help companies attract women to fill open jobs at a moment when many companies are struggling with a labor shortage.
Chip makers, Ms. Raimondo said, “will not be successful unless you find a way to attract, train, put to work and retain women, and you won’t do that without child care.”
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The rules for chip makers come on top of other requirements written into the law, including a ban on certain new investments in China. Under that restriction, chip manufacturers that take U.S. funding cannot make new, high-tech investments in China or other “countries of concern” for at least a decade, a prohibition designed to ensure that U.S. taxpayer money does not go toward building operations in China.
