CHIPS Act: We will evaluate ‘each application on its own,’ U.S. Commerce Secretary says

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the CHIPS Act, evaluating each company for funding, investor sentiment, and the expectations for success.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Well, today the application process opens for the CHIPS and Science Act. The federal government allocating $39 billion to help chipmakers build out more facilities here in the United States. And yesterday I had the chance to speak with US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo about that process and what criteria the administration will be using.

GINA RAIMONDO: We are going to look at each application on its own, and we have very clear national security goals that we need to achieve, which I lay out in the vision paper that we put out today. We need to make sure that we have two big clusters of sophisticated semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. We need to have packaging facilities in the United States. We want to have advanced memory made in the United States.

So what– we’ve put out these goals, and then we’ll evaluate every application on its own and see, you know, what makes the most sense. The reality is there are only a few companies in the world that can do leading-edge chip manufacturing and that can do advanced memory, so we’ll look at each of them. There will be a lot of due diligence. We’ll run them through the paces, and then we’ll make our decisions.

JULIE HYMAN: And there are a couple of chipmakers, of course, already that have talked about plans to start construction– Intel, right, of course, Taiwan Semiconductor. And so how will then the grant-making process match up with the plans we’ve already heard from some of these companies?

GINA RAIMONDO: Yes, that’s a great question. It is possible that a facility that’s already been announced would be eligible for these incentives, and I expect that some companies that have already announced projects will receive incentives. The question– you know, again, my job is to make sure that we don’t give money to any project that would have happened otherwise. This money is to bring projects to life at the size and scale we need that wouldn’t have happened without taxpayer support. And so we’re going to evaluate each project on its own and decide what’s right for America.

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JULIE HYMAN: Are companies chomping at the bit here? Are you expecting, once the application process opens, to get a flood of applications?

GINA RAIMONDO: Time will tell. I’m smiling because we’ll have to wait and see. The application is live today, and it’s a comprehensive application. You know, we need– we have to. You know, we’re stewards of taxpayer money. We have to have lots of information, transparency, accountability. We need financial information for each project from every company. We need to see a workforce plan for each project from each company. It’s pretty extensive. So I hope the companies we need to apply do apply, and I’m very confident that we’ll be successful.

BRAD SMITH: And there is plenty more ahead from the US commerce secretary across our programming today.