My congressional district was named for the materials that semiconductors are made of — Silicon Valley. But although chips are now found in everything from smartwatches to fighter jets, few semiconductors are made in the valley or anywhere in the United States.
Thirty years ago, the United States manufactured nearly 40% of all semiconductor chips, but today we produce only 12%. The industry’s supply chains are fragile, leaving our economy and national security vulnerable to disruption by adversarial foreign governments and supply chain shocks, and we experienced this firsthand throughout the pandemic and over the past few years with the scarcity of the products we rely on.
To revitalize our domestic semiconductor industry, Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act last year, and last week, the House of Representatives built on that investment by passing my bipartisan bill, the Securing Semiconductor Supply Chains Act. This bill will ensure that the government develops strategies to attract investment in semiconductors here in the United States to bring our country back to No. 1 in the world in semiconductor manufacturing and to maintain our leadership in technological innovation.
While these bills are needed to reduce our reliance on foreign manufacturers and boost domestic investment, chips are just one source of vulnerability in the microelectronics supply chain. Chips sit on printed circuit boards (PCBs), critical and complex components of almost every piece of electronics used today. All chips are mounted on PCBs, which allow them to communicate with the systems they power. Currently, as with semiconductors, China dominates PCB production, creating 45% of PCBs globally, while the U.S. market share is only 4%.
From my near decade of service on the House Intelligence Committee, I know firsthand the vulnerabilities of foreign-made products in our supply chains and the risks of foreign-made products embedded in the technology that powers everything from the medical devices that keep us healthy to the military equipment our servicemembers rely on to protect our nation. This dependence on foreign suppliers gives our adversaries the opportunity to compromise our phones, computers and other electronics by inserting malicious components into PCBs.
That’s why I’m proud to lead the way on investing in PCBs and why I introduced the bipartisan Protecting Circuit Boards and Substrates Act. My bill is modeled on the CHIPS program for semiconductors by providing incentives for the PCB and substrate industries to invest in domestic PCB manufacturing facilities. These new facilities will support thousands of high-quality jobs and help train workers across the country, all while bringing PCB production back to the U.S.
The passage of my Securing Semiconductor Supply Chains Act this Congress and the CHIPS and Science Act last Congress are important achievements for the United States. I’m proud of that work. But we need investments across the entire microelectronics ecosystem. My Protecting Circuit Boards Act is a critical step in this direction, and I’m committed to bringing this industry back to our country and back to the valley named after these products.
Rep. Anna G. Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, represents District 16 in the United States House of Representatives.