The Japanese trade minister said on Friday that Japan is giving a big U.S. chipmaker a subsidy of up to 46.6 billion yen ($322 million) to help it with its plan to make advanced memory chips at a factory in Hiroshima.
The decision to help fund Micron Technology was made after U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s trip to Japan, where she met with Japanese leaders. This is part of a larger effort by the U.S. and Japan to work together to expand the manufacturing and supply chains for important materials.
Yasutoshi Nishimura, Japan’s Minister of Economy and Trade, said, “I hope the deal will lead to more cooperation between Japan and the US in the semiconductor field.”
He said that the government gave its approval for the deal on Friday because of law about economic security.
Japan has its own fund to help support the production of semiconductors, and the deal it made on Friday was it’s third.
During her trip to Asia this week, Harris met with Japanese officials and executives from semiconductor companies to ask for more help in developing and making semiconductors in response to China’s growing power.
Japan will pay 46.6 bill to the U.S.
One of the companies that Harris met with was Micron. There were also Tokyo Electron, Nikon, Hitachi High-Tech Group, and Fujitsu Ltd.
Micron said in a statement that it will use the subsidy to increase production and speed up the development of its 1-beta DRAM memory chips. These chips are important for advanced data facilities and technology for a 5G network upgrade and artificial intelligence.
The US is working with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to make their tech partnerships stronger. It is also trying to make more semiconductors in the US. This is important because China is also investing in computer chips.
Rahm Emanuel has been working to improve economic security between the two allies. He said that the deal signed on Friday “symbolizes the investment and integration of our two economies and supply chains.” “And from here on out, things will only get worse.”
Nishimura has talked a lot about how the U.S. and Japan work together on things like semiconductors, energy, and other things.
Japan used to make more computer chips than any other country, but that has changed in the last 20 years, and the country is getting more and more worried about falling behind.
Japan gave the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Sony Group, and Denso Corp. 476 billion yen ($3.3 billion) in subsidies to help them build a new factory in the southern prefecture of Kumamoto.
Japan is also giving up to 92.9 billion yen ($644 million) to a building in central Japan that is being built by Western Digital Corp. and Kioxia Corp.
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