The Trump administration is renegotiating some of the CHIPS Act grants agreed by former President Joe Biden during his time in office.

Speaking to members of the Senate Appropriations Committee during a hearing on June 4, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said some of the grants “just seemed overly generous,” adding, “we’ve been able to renegotiate them… for the benefit of the American taxpayer.”

Lutnick did not provide any further information about which grants have been renegotiated, but did tell lawmakers: “All the deals are getting better, and the only deals that are not getting done are deals that should have never been done in the first place,” implying that some funding agreements could be scrapped altogether.

During his confirmation hearing in January, Lutnick told senators he would honor agreements that had already been finalized.

President Trump has been critical of the CHIPS Act, instead arguing that the government should levy tariffs on the semiconductor industry instead of handing out grants and loans to chip companies.

In January 2025, Trump pledged to “return production” of semiconductors to the United States by imposing a “100 percent tax” on their overseas production, claiming that tariffs would incentivize companies to manufacture chips in the US instead of Taiwan.

Trump has yet to impose any tariffs on semiconductors; however, some companies have already announced plans to invest in US-based chip manufacturing efforts.

In March, TSMC announced that it would invest $100 billion into the US after President Trump criticized Taiwan for 'stealing' America's chip business, said that the CHIPS Act was a failure, and threatened tariffs.

Then in April, Nvidia unveiled plans to produce AI supercomputers 'entirely' in the US, saying it would work with its manufacturing partners to commission more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test Blackwell GPUs in Arizona and AI supercomputers in Texas.

That same month, AMD said it would bring up and validate its fifth generation Epyc CPUs – previously known as Turin – at TSMC’s new chip fab in Arizona.

Additionally, this week GlobalFoundries announced it is investing an additional $3 billion to boost semiconductor manufacturing at its facilities in New York and Vermont, bringing its total investment in the US to $16bn.