Tariff Times Daily: Commerce Backs First Quantum Foundry With $1 Billion
America leads the way with new investments in Quantum chip foundries and critical mineral deals.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The Commerce Department’s announced a billion-dollar award to build the nation’s first dedicated quantum chip foundry, leading the way into a new era of American innovation. Quantum is set to be one of the most important industries of the future with significant implications for national security and commercial industrial activity.
The White House Signs Technology and Critical-Minerals Understanding With Sweden, setting the stage for U.S lead cooperation across important infant industries, in particular by lowering costs to raw and semi-processed materials for U.S industry.
On Capitol Hill, members look for transparency in Section 232 investigations and means to securing the semiconductor supply chain. The trade-remedy machinery kept working through the weekend as well, with fresh antidumping and countervailing determinations on chromium and palladium that hold pricing discipline on subsidized foreign metal.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio continues to build mineral diplomacy that will drive down costs for industry. While the Department of Interior increasingly is working toward opening up American mining and processing, these developments will take years to be ready. In the meanwhile, Secretary of State Rubio is creating agreements that will lead to lower input costs for U.S industry, particularly innovative frontline infant industries.
TODAY’S STORIES
Commerce Backs America’s First Quantum Foundry With Proposed $1 Billion CHIPS Award
IBM and the Department of Commerce announced a letter of intent on May 21 to build the country’s first purpose-built quantum chip foundry, a new venture called Anderon, supported by a proposed $1 billion CHIPS award alongside a matching billion-dollar commitment from IBM. The stated goal is to manufacture the majority of the world’s quantum wafers on American soil and to offer fabrication to outside quantum vendors. Deploying CHIPS funds to seat an entirely new category of advanced manufacturing here, rather than letting it take root abroad, is the American System applied to a frontier industry: build the productive base first, and the supply chain and skilled workforce follow.
Source: IBM Newsroom; the Commerce Department co-announced the award.
White House Signs Technology and Critical-Minerals Understanding With Sweden
The White House on May 22 announced a Technology Prosperity Deal with Sweden, a declaration of intent to cooperate across artificial intelligence, quantum computing, civil nuclear power, defense systems, and critical-minerals technology spanning exploration, extraction, processing, and recovery. The arrangement carries no binding financial commitment, but it signals where the administration intends to align allied capacity. For domestic industry, the value lies in widening access to mineral-processing expertise and advanced-materials research among partners who operate under comparable standards, which reduces dependence on a single dominant supplier.
Source: White House.
Bipartisan Senate Bill Would Require Commerce to Publish Section 232 Findings
Sens. Gary Peters and Susan Collins introduced the Section 232 Public Transparency Act, which would require the Commerce Department to publish summaries of its national-security investigations into imports under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Section 232 is the authority behind the steel, aluminum, and more recent sectoral tariffs, and its reports are not always released on a predictable timeline. Clearer public reporting would strengthen the tool rather than constrain it, giving domestic producers and the trade bar firmer ground to understand the basis for protection and to plan around it.
Source: Inside Trade.
Critical Minerals Lead the Agenda as Rubio Heads to the Quad
Secretary of State Marco Rubio travels to India for a Quad foreign ministers’ meeting beginning May 26, where the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi says critical-minerals supply chains will be a priority topic. The Quad format gives Washington a venue to coordinate mineral sourcing and processing with Australia, Japan, and India outside any single bilateral track. Diversifying the supply of the minerals that feed magnets, batteries, and defense systems is a precondition for the domestic manufacturing the administration is working to expand.
Source: Inside Trade.
CPA: Europe Moves to Reclaim Antibiotic Production From Asian Suppliers
The Coalition for a Prosperous America reports that the European Union is advancing measures to protect domestic antibiotic manufacturing from Asian dominance, a posture that brings Brussels closer to the supply-chain thinking already guiding U.S. policy. Essential medicines are a textbook case for the home-market argument: a nation that cannot produce its own basic antibiotics has surrendered a piece of its sovereignty to whoever controls the active ingredients. That a major trading bloc is reaching the same conclusion lends weight to the case for reshoring strategic production.
Source: Coalition for a Prosperous America (allied org).
FEDERAL REGISTER WATCH
Notice — AD Preliminary Determination: Commerce — chromium trioxide from Türkiye and India is preliminarily found to be selling below fair value, with provisional duties to follow. Chromium trioxide is an input for plating and aerospace finishing, and an affirmative preliminary finding restores pricing discipline for the domestic petitioners. Türkiye | India
Notice — Final CVD Determination: Commerce — countervailable subsidies confirmed on unwrought palladium from Russia. Palladium is a strategic catalyst and electronics metal, and a final affirmative finding closes a subsidized channel into the U.S. market. Read notice
Notice — AD Administrative Review (Preliminary): Commerce — LG Chem preliminarily found not to have sold superabsorbent polymers from Korea below normal value for 2023-24. A reminder that review can narrow an order where dumping is not shown, which is the system functioning as designed. Read notice
Notice — AD Administrative Review (Final): Commerce — Poland’s sole exporter of preserved mushrooms determined to have sold below normal value, sustaining duties for domestic growers. Read notice
ON THE DOCKET
Sunset-review week: four ITC five-year reviews covering steel and chemical imports all close June 1, the last window for domestic producers to argue the existing duties still belong in place.
Jun 01 (closes in 7 days) — ITC: Five-year sunset reviews on steel nails, steel grating, welded line pipe, and carbazole violet pigment 23. A sunset review decides whether existing antidumping and countervailing orders continue for another five years or lapse; the comment window is where domestic producers and trade associations submit the injury evidence that keeps the orders alive, and silence favors revocation. Steel nails | Steel grating | Welded line pipe | Carbazole violet pigment 23
ON THE HILL
HEARINGS & MARKUPS
Both trade committees are in recess for the Memorial Day district work period; no Ways and Means or Senate Finance hearings or markups are noticed for the coming week.
BILLS TO WATCH
HR 2715 — Destruction of Hazardous Imports Act: Would direct CBP to destroy hazardous and noncompliant imported goods rather than permit re-export or re-entry, strengthening the border against substandard foreign product that undercuts compliant domestic manufacturers. Ordered to be reported by Ways and Means, 43-0, on May 21. View bill
S 1473 — Stop Stealing our Chips Act: Targets the diversion and smuggling of advanced semiconductors to adversary end-users, protecting the technology lead that CHIPS investment is meant to build. Held at the desk in the Senate on May 21, a late procedural stage. View bill
HR 8959 — Semiconductor Superiority Act: Aims to reinforce domestic semiconductor competitiveness; referred to Ways and Means on May 21, where its trade and tariff provisions will be shaped. View bill
S 4611 — Job Corps and the Defense Industrial Base: Would align Job Corps training with defense-industrial-base needs, connecting workforce development to the manufacturing capacity the country is working to rebuild. Referred to the HELP Committee on May 20. View bill
TODAY IN AMERICAN HISTORY
On May 25, 1787, the Constitutional Convention reached a quorum and formally convened in Philadelphia, the gathering that produced Article I’s grant to Congress of the power to lay duties and imposts, the constitutional foundation on which every American protective tariff since has rested.