Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, bought millions of dollars worth of stock in a computer chip company prior to an expected Senate vote on a subsidy bill to boost chip manufacturing.
Numerous companies are waiting for Congress to pass a $52 billion incentive package for chip production and research before committing to significant expansion efforts, according to company executives and funding proposal documents.
The expansion plans anticipated getting part of their funding from the subsidy package, which early on had bipartisan support in Congress and has been backed by the Biden administration.
Mr. Pelosi purchased roughly $5 million, or 20,000 shares of Nvidia, last month, according to a financial disclosure report released this week by the speaker’s office. Mr. Pelosi also sold portions of his stock in Apple and Visa.
The purchase comes on the heels of a vote next week on a China competition bill in the Senate that would shore up the U.S. computer chip manufacturing industry.
The proposal would allocate $52 billion to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing and provide tax credits for production.
The House passed the COMPETES Act in February, in hopes of making the United States more competitive with China.
The government money is aimed at revitalizing U.S. chip production after manufacturing in recent decades shifted to Asia, where financial inducements have been plentiful and costs lower. American chip-making capacity has fallen to 12% of the world’s total from 37% in 1990.
Appetite to fund the buildup domestically got a boost during a two-year chip drought that led to idled car plants and soaring prices for some electronic goods.
The memory-chip maker is in talks with multiple states to add production capacity, he said. The incentives are key to making a U.S. factory project happen, he said, but companies can’t keep delaying investment decisions waiting for Congress and will lock in plans on where it is economically most feasible to expand. Micron plans to spend more than $150 billion in the next decade to increase manufacturing.
Chip companies have been lobbying Congress for years for financial support that would significantly cut the cost of adding new factories in the U.S. Their appeals have run into opposition, though, on both sides of the political spectrum viewing the funding proposal either as pork-barrel politics or arguing it should be tied to social policy commitments such as higher pay.
Political | Process 
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