Apple has been lobbying the U.S. government on tax breaks to support domestic chip production.
In second- and third-quarter disclosure reports, the company said it lobbied officials from the Treasury Department, Congress and the White House on tax topics including “issues related to tax credits for domestic semiconductor production.”
Apple’s recent lobbying coincides with a push by the company and its partners to move some production away from China and even back to the U.S. in a few cases. There’s also a broader effort by the U.S. semiconductor industry to get government support for increased domestic production.
Apple’s U.S. lobbying efforts are now mostly led by company veteran Tim Powderly, who was promoted around the time Cynthia Hogan, Apple’s prior top U.S. lobbyist, left to join former vice president Joe Biden’s campaign.
In June, TSMC secured government subsidies for a planned $12 billion U.S. chip plant to be built in Arizona. The new plant is designed to allay U.S. national security concerns and shift high-tech manufacturing to America. The decision to situate a plant in Arizona came after White House officials warned about the threat inherent in having much of the world’s electronics made outside of the U.S.
MacDailyNews Take: Better to spread your eggs out than to entrust them to just a single basket.