Semiconductor chips are seen on a circuit board of a computer in this illustration picture taken February 25, 2022. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration/File Photo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump's administration is renegotiating some of former President Joe Biden's grants to semiconductor firms, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said at a hearing on Wednesday, suggesting some awards may be axed.
Some of the Biden-era grants "just seemed overly generous, and we've been able to renegotiate them," Lutnick told lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Committee, adding the goal was to benefit American taxpayers.
"All the deals are getting better, and the only deals that are not getting done are deals that should have never been done in the first place," Lutnick said, appearing to signal that not all the awards would survive renegotiation.
Biden in 2022 signed the CHIPS and Science Act to plow $52.7 billion into boosting semiconductor chips manufacturing and research in the U.S. and luring chipmakers away from Asia.
The program rolled out billions in grants for semiconductor heavyweights including Taiwan's TSMC, South Korea's Samsung and SK Hynix, as well as U.S.-based Intel and Micron .
The grants, while signed, had only just begun to be disbursed by the time Biden left office. The details of those plans are not public but the money is meant to be disbursed as companies make progress toward their pledged plant expansions.
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Lutnick pointed to TSMC as an example of successful renegotiation. He said the chipmaker -- which won a $6 billion Chips Act award -- had increased by $100 billion its initial pledge to invest $65 billion in U.S. manufacturing.
"We were able to modify the award for the same $6 billion of (government) funding," he said.
TSMC announced the $100 billion in added investment in March but it was not immediately clear whether that was part of a renegotiation of its Chips Act award.
TSMC declined to comment.
Reuters reported in February that the White House was seeking to renegotiate the awards and had signaled delays to some upcoming semiconductor disbursements.
Lutnick also said the administration agrees with the goal of having more than 50% of global AI computing capacity in America, responding to concerns that deals like the one announced by Trump last month to allow the United Arab Emirates to buy advanced American artificial intelligence chips could deprive the United States of key AI computing power.
(Reporting by Alexandra Alper; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by David Gregorio, Deepa Babington and Edwina Gibbs)
