A global shortage of microchips has crimped the availability of cars and other products. It’s also stirring discussion about something longer term: whether the U.S. needs an industrial policy to retain an edge in innovation.
The computer chip shortage, which has disrupted supplies of everything from automobiles to wheelchair accessories, is pushing Congress to take big steps in helping America’s high-tech industry.
Congress has already passed legislation to encourage semiconductor firms to build chip fabrication facilities, or fabs, in the United States. It has not yet authorized the funding. Not for the first time, the nation is poised to dramatically pump up funding for scientific research and, more controversially, help high-tech companies to meet an international challenge.
“Rather than a sea change, we’re on another wave,” says John Alic, an author and visiting scholar at Arizona State University’s Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes.
The wave wouldn’t solve the chip shortage. The current mismatch between constrained supply and soaring demand will likely be over, perhaps by next year and almost certainly before any federal incentives make a meaningful contribution. But they could induce a big leap in domestic production, possibly making future chip shortages less acute. And, politically speaking, the current shortage is so visible to car buyers and other consumers who have seen soaring prices and huge delays in product shipments, that Congress is eager to act.
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