Legislation to provide $3 billion to support domestic production of PCBs and substrates is languishing before a House committee nearly one year after it was introduced with bipartisan support.
The future of the bill, HR 3249, remains uncertain, amid a rancorous presidential election year and the retirement of one of the bill’s co-sponsors, US Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., after she served 32 years in the House.
The bill, formally titled “Protecting Circuit Boards and Substrates Act” was introduced in May 2023 by US Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, and has several co-sponsors, most recently including US Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.
Political strategists are already assessing how the measure could possibly move forward, even under a new Congress that will installed in January. Already, odds are being weighed for how a potential Trump Whitehouse would look at the legislation.
The legislation faces “chips fatigue,” according to several lobbyists, after months of concentrated efforts on passage of the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022, which was followed by months of delays in awarding tentative grants. The tentative funding has recently accelerated including more than $14 billion to TSMC and Intel in recent weeks.
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“There are a different set of concerns with the PCB bill on the Hill,” said Richard Cappetto, senior direct of North American government relations for IPC, a non-profit trade group representing 3,000 global companies in circuit board and related trades. IPC has been a staunch supporter of the measure, arguing that the national focus on chip production overlooks the importance of PCBs and substrates, which are also essential to all electronics but virtually ignored by policymakers.
Cappetto said one voting flank in Congress is concerned about giving large incentives to companies, seeing them as corporate welfare, while another flank is opposed to creating tax breaks. A tax credit in the bill would be 25% of the cost for acquiring PCBs fabricated in the US.
“We’re still pushing the bill and it’s needed and we’re open to feedback and how to adjust the bill,” Cappetto said in an interview at the IPC APEX conference in Anaheim, Calif. “We’re waiting for the aha! moment, but we realize what’s happening and we’re faced with the environment of this Congress where it’s difficult to get anything done. We have to budget our political capital.”
The arguments in favor of the PCB bill follow similar justifications used in the CHIPS Act. While the US has plenty of circuit board designers, it has limited production capability, with much of it done in China.
The commercial sector can currently go abroad to buy PCBs, but a much bigger concern faces the US Department of Defense in procuring electronics (including PCBs) used in space and defense applications, said Chistopher Peters, senior advisor at US Partnership for Assured Electronics.
Even for commercial needs, buyers of PCBs must go to Asian suppliers to obtain PCBs with circuit traces of 25 microns, since 75 micron traces are the only ones generally available from US suppliers, Peters said. A similar problem applies to defense acquisitions of flat panel displays that are not produced in the US, but still used in weapons systems. (South Korea is a major source of flat panel displays.)
“It’s about education,” Peters said, indicating the need to show elected leaders and the public that many parts of electronics are not produced in the US. “We simply don’t have the capability within our shores,” he added.
As HB 3249 languishes in Congress, IPC is also lobbying for PCB funding through the Defense Appropriations Act, which receives annual approval, Cappetto said. A line in that Act for circuit board-related funding was reduced to $60 million last year, down from $87 initially proposed. Still, $60 or even $80 million is tiny when compared to the $850 billion in the overall act, he noted.
“We’re sounding the alarm on Capitol Hill,” Cappetto said.
Among the nearly 8,000 attendees at the IPC APEX conference were many from large and middle-sized companies that depend on PCB supplies to finish their commercial products. Some of the companies are filling contracts for electronics used in defense and space applications, such as Axiom in Hillsboro, Oregon. Michael Brinkley, manufacturing engineer at Axiom, said on the floor of the event that he would personally favor federal funding to support PCB manufacturing the US. Axiom’s electronic assemblies have been used in missions to the ISS and the moon.
“I’d like to see more investment there,” Brinkley said. “PCBs are not coding or AI design, but it’s still important. Electronics hardware makes all these things run and can’t be overlooked.”