'Dead on arrival': GOP lawmakers blast Trump’s call for CHIPS Act repeal

06 March

During his often-incendiary 2025 State of the Union address on Tuesday night, March 4, President Donald Trump angrily railed against former President Joe Biden and called for the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 — one of the biggest legislative achievements of Biden's presidency — to be repealed.

Trump described the legislation as "horrible," yet the CHIPS and Science Act received a lot of Republican votes, including 24 in the U.S. House of Representatives and 17 in the U.S. Senate. And Biden hailed it as a bipartisan achievement.

According to The Hill's Alexander Bolton, some prominent Republicans are saying that while they are open to tweaking the CHIPS and Science Act, they won't vote for a total repeal.

Bolton, in an article published on March 6, reports, "Republican lawmakers on Wednesday said President Trump's call for Congress to 'get rid of' the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which provided $52 billion for the domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry, is dead on arrival on Capitol Hill. Republican senators said they're willing to work with Trump to make some changes to the program, but they argued the money allocated to bolster microchip production in the United States is critical to national security."

Bolton adds, "They also point out the money has already been spent and there simply wouldn't be the votes to repeal a law that passed the Senate and House with strong bipartisan majorities."

One of the GOP lawmakers who voted for the CHIPS and Science Act, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), argues that the "whole purpose of" the bill "was national security."

Cornyn told The Hill, "I think reconstituting domestic manufacturing of advanced semiconductors is a national security and economic imperative…. Because if there's a disruption between Asia or Taiwan, to be more specific, and the United States, we would plunge into a depression — and we wouldn’t be able to build advanced weapons or aircraft like the F-35."

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), another Republican who voted for the CHIPS and Science Act, also voiced his opposition to repealing it.

Referring to Trump's call for repealing during his State of the Union address, Tillis told The Hill, "That's not going to happen It was a statement at a joint address, but do you really believe we have eight or 10 votes from the Democrat side to repeal it, even if on its face we thought it was a good idea?"

Read The Hill's full article at this link.

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