Republicans Who Opposed ‘CHIPS Act’ Skeptical of Trump’s Talk of Eliminating It

WASHINGTON—Senate Republicans who spoke with The Epoch Times on March 6 appeared skeptical of President Donald Trump’s recent call to eliminate the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, during the president’s recent address to a joint session of Congress.

“You should get rid of the CHIPS Act, Mr. Speaker,” Trump said at his March 4 speech, addressing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

Trump said the law amounted to a giveaway to specific companies.

“We don’t have to give them money. We just want to protect our businesses and our people, and they will come because they won’t have to pay tariffs if they build in America,” he said.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a long-time CHIPS opponent, suggested that the odds of CHIPS’ elimination were slim.

“The truth is, I doubt Congress will repeal CHIPS,” he told The Epoch Times. “I suppose the president could ask for the funding to stop. The money is in various states of disbursement.”

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It authorized about $280 billion in overall spending, appropriating over $52 billion with $39 billion for production incentives and $11 billion for research and development.

One CHIPS beneficiary, the Taiwanese semiconductor company TSMC, said it received $1.5 billion ahead of Trump’s inauguration.

CHIPS passed the Senate 64–33 and the House 243–187 as a result of reconciliation between the two chambers. Even if significant Republican buy-in existed, reversing course on the law would likely be difficult.

A supermajority of senators, or 60, would be needed to end any Senate filibuster on an attempted repeal—and, in the view of Hawley, even something like a reform to CHIPS is not likely to enter into ongoing negotiations over a reconciliation package unless the president makes it a key priority, on par with his push to extend the tax cuts from his first administration.

Hawley, known as an economic populist, reiterated that opposition on March 6, saying he sees the law as “a giveaway to big corporations.”

He also noted his objection to its relationship, or lack thereof, to tariffs, a cornerstone of Trump’s economic and foreign policy; CHIPS omits Section 301 tariff exclusions and related trade measures under discussion as part of related bills, the United States Innovation and Competition Act and the America Competes Act, that were combined to create the final law.

Other Republicans were more equivocal about CHIPS.

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who also voted against CHIPS in 2022, told The Epoch Times that he was unsure what the president meant when he mentioned the law during his address.

“I don’t know that he meant everything, or the parts that were wasteful, or what,” Crapo said, saying the law authorized hundreds of billions in funding that was not narrowly targeted to domestic chip production.

Parts “that were specifically related to the chips, I think, should be protected,” he said.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who voted for CHIPS in 2022, told The Epoch Times the law had been “critical to national security,” saying it paved the way for TSMC’s $100 billion investment in the new Trump administration.

He said the bipartisan law grew in part out of concerns with supply-chain vulnerabilities articulated by the first Trump administration, citing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—recently stripped of his security detail by Trump—and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross as key voices on issues that CHIPS ultimately addressed.

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), another lawmaker who voted for CHIPS, told reporters that “the president understands we have to reshore semiconductor production,” saying it should be improved so it can “keep producing good results.”

He said the president had informed him of any possible changes to CHIPS he might hope to see enacted.