President Biden, building on a week of favorable political developments, celebrated a $6.1 billion grant to Micron Technology on Thursday, saying it would help the United States become less reliant on Asian countries by bolstering the nation’s supply of semiconductors.
“New factories are going up all across the country,” Mr. Biden said at the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology in Syracuse, N.Y. “Communities like Syracuse are writing the great American comeback story.”
The grant for Micron, the latest multibillion-dollar award that federal officials have made to chip manufacturers in the past few weeks, will help the company construct two leading-edge chip plants in New York and another facility in Idaho, Biden administration officials said. The federal government will also provide up to $7.5 billion in loans to Micron.
Ramping up domestic chip production is a major goal for Mr. Biden, whose economic policy agenda largely focuses on strengthening American manufacturing and bringing back jobs that have shifted overseas in recent decades. Only about 10 percent of the world’s semiconductors are made in the United States, down from about 37 percent in 1990.
Although the grant had been announced last week by Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, Mr. Biden’s trip gave the president a chance to celebrate another victory in what is shaping up to be a successful week for him. On Wednesday, he secured the endorsement of the North America’s Building Trades Unions, largely because of his bipartisan infrastructure package. He is also fresh off signing a $95.3 billion package of aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan after months of congressional gridlock, reaffirming a central focus of his foreign policy agenda.
And while he promoted his efforts to bolster manufacturing in Syracuse, Mr. Biden’s Republican opponent in the 2024 election, former President Donald J. Trump, was in court just 200 miles southeast, in New York City, as his state criminal trial on charges of falsifying business records continued.
“My predecessor and his MAGA Republican friends have a very different view,” Mr. Biden said, adding that some Republicans, including Representatives Brandon Williams and Elise Stefanik of New York, have criticized the CHIPS Act. “I guess they’re not going to be here today to celebrate.”
The grant’s funding stems from the CHIPS Act, which a bipartisan group of lawmakers passed in 2022 to re-establish the United States as a leader in the production of semiconductors, the tiny components that power everything from phones and computers to cars and fighter jets. The law gave the Commerce Department $39 billion to distribute as grants to encourage chipmakers to construct and expand manufacturing plants across the United States.
As part of their new announcement, federal officials said that Micron now planned to spend $50 billion to develop the first three plants over the next six years, and that the company would invest up to $125 billion in the United States over the next 20 years or more. The company has said it could build up to four manufacturing plants in New York.
“We are rebuilding upstate New York’s economy one microchip at a time,” Mr. Schumer said on Thursday. He said the investment was expected to create about 50,000 jobs in the Syracuse region. “This is the largest single private investment in all of New York State’s history.”
Micron’s award brings the total announced federal grants to more than $29 billion. This month, U.S. officials awarded Samsung up to $6.4 billion in grants. Other big chipmakers — including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Intel — have also received awards recently. GlobalFoundries, Microchip Technology and BAE Systems received the first three awards.
Micron is also expected to claim federal tax credits that could cover 25 percent of the cost of building and outfitting factories with production equipment. The plant in Idaho is expected to be ready for production in 2026, senior Biden administration officials said. The first plant in New York is expected to open in 2028, with the second ready for production in 2029.
At least $40 million of the grant will be set aside for Micron to develop and train its work force. On Thursday, Mr. Biden also announced the creation of four new “work force hubs” in upstate New York, Michigan, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. The hubs are for training and connecting workers to jobs created by new federal investments.
Micron is the last U.S. supplier of chips called dynamic random access memory, or DRAM. Those chips play a vital role in computers and smartphones, acting like a scratchpad to temporarily store data that must be retrieved frequently. Leading-edge DRAM chips are critical for advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and wireless communications. All such leading-edge chips are currently manufactured in Asia, but administration officials said Micron’s investments would allow the United States to produce its own supply.
Micron conducts most of its manufacturing in Taiwan, Japan and Singapore. Sanjay Mehrotra, the company’s chief executive, has made an effort to bolster its U.S. production and win government subsidies for that expansion. But Mr. Mehrotra has reiterated that the timing of such spending will closely track supply and demand, and reflect the company’s success in winning federal grants.
“Micron’s leading-edge memory is foundational to meeting the growing demands of artificial intelligence,” Mr. Mehrotra said in a statement. “We are proud to be making significant memory manufacturing investments in the U.S.”
Don Clark contributed reporting from San Francisco.