Top Democrat criticizes Trump administration for worsening chip shortage

The CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law in 2022, allocated roughly $39 billion to incentivize semiconductor manufacturing on US soil. America’s share of global chip fabrication had collapsed from about 37% in 1990 to roughly 10% by 2022. That kind of dependency on foreign fabs, particularly in geopolitically sensitive regions, made supply chain experts nervous. Trump administration officials criticized the CHIPS Act programs and floated the possibility of discontinuing them. Industry stakeholders pushed back hard. When you’ve committed billions in capital expenditure based on promised federal incentives, hearing the government might pull the rug is, to put it mildly, unsettling. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in June 2026 that there is “no line of sight” for AI memory chip supply to meet demand, projecting that shortages would likely extend beyond 2027. AI is the primary demand driver right now, with hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon hoovering up every available chip for training and inference workloads. During the 2020-2023 shortage cycle, Bitcoin miners faced significant delays in receiving new equipment. Premiums on mining hardware spiked, squeezing margins for...