How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

AMERICAN CHIPMAKERSAIAICHIPS account for a third of global semiconductor sales. They design the world’s most sophisticated microprocessors, which power smartphones, data centres and, increasingly, artificial-intelligence () models. But neither the American firms nor their Asian contract manufacturers make any such leading-edge chips in America. Given chips’ centrality to modern economies—and, in the age of , to war-fighting—that worries policymakers in Washington. Their answer was the Act, a $50bn package of subsidies, tax credits and other sweeteners to bring advanced chipmaking back to America, which President Joe Biden signed into law on August 9th 2022.