The Biden administration is planning “aggressive steps” to alleviate the global semiconductor shortage, Bloomberg reports. The chip shortage has impacted the auto industry and contributed to the scarcity of next-generation gaming consoles.
The result is companies like Apple, Qualcomm, Sony, and AMD have all cited shortages in recent weeks, with effects ranging from part shortages for iPhones to the incredibly hard-to-find nature of the PlayStation 5 or AMD’s newest CPUs and GPUs.
But in today’s increasingly connected world, a shortage of semiconductor chips impacts not only traditional technology industries, but also a wide-ranging list of other industries. Numerous automotive companies including Volkswagen, Fiat Chrysler, and Toyota have been forced to temporarily suspend vehicle production over the past several months. And Ford just announced that it would be pausing manufacturing on its most lucrative F-150 trucks earlier this month in the wake of chip shortages.
President Biden “is expected to sign an executive order directing a government-wide supply chain review for critical goods in the coming weeks, with the chip shortage a central concern behind the probe,” the report says. Among the administration’s priorities: “identifying choke points in supply chains” to ease current shortages.
In the longer term, the White House may also create new incentives to bring chip manufacturing into the United States, according to CNBC. The top executives of chip makers, including Intel and Qualcomm, have urged the Biden administration to fund such initiatives, though it’s not clear exactly what form the incentives could take.
