Microchips control the functions of everything from computers to refrigerators, from SUVs to missiles. They are crucial not only to the economy but to national defense.

So a global shortage of computer chips, coupled with only 12% of the world’s chips being produced in the United States, have produced an aggressive effort to increase production in America.

Congress and the Biden administration have approved a $52 billion subsidy program.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest producer, already has begun construction on a $12 plant in Arizona. But it has said that the speed of that project is tied to its receipt of subsidies.

Intel Corp., the largest U.S. producer, has committed to a $20 billion plant near Columbus, Ohio. Other major producers, including GlobalFoundries and Samsung, say that they plan to seek subsidies to build in the United States.

Many companies and the industry, collectively, lobbied hard for the subsidies on economic and security grounds, while pledging that their projects would create thousands of high-paying jobs.

Now, however, Time magazine has reported that Intel plans to lay off up to 20% of its 113,000-strong U.S. workforce due to low demand for personal computer processors. Other producers might follow its lead.

Nothing in the subsidy law, however, ties the billions of dollars of federal funding to relevant job growth. It’s just the latest chapter in a long-running pattern of the government creating corporate subsidies and failing to ensure that they benefit workers and taxpayers.

As noted during the debate over the subsidy bill, U.S. microchip manufactures closed more than 700 U.S. plants and laid off about 150,000 U.S. workers in the past two decades while moving production abroad. The government should not reward them now without assurances of job growth.

— Republican & Herald, Pottsville via TNS