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    Will Billions More in New Aid Save Family Farms?

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    Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has a line about the state of small-scale agriculture in America these days.It’s drawn from the National Agricultural Statistics Service, which shows that as the average size of farms has risen, the nation had lost 544,000 of them since 1981. “That’s every farm today that exists in North Dakota and South Dakota, added to those in Wisconsin and Minnesota, added to those in Nebraska and Colorado, added to those in Oklahoma and Missouri,” Mr. Vilsack told a conference in Washington this spring. “Are we as a country OK with it?”Even though the United States continues to produce more food on fewer acres, Mr. Vilsack worries that the loss of small farmers has weakened rural economies, and he wants to stop the bleeding. Unlike his last turn in the same job, under former President Barack Obama, this time his department is able to spend billions of dollars in subsidies and incentives passed under three major laws since 2021 — including the biggest investment in conservation programs in U.S. history.The plan in a nutshell: Multiply and improve revenue streams to bolster farm balance sheets. Rather than just selling crops and livestock, farms of the future could also sell carbon credits, waste products and renewable energy.“Instead of the farm getting one check, they potentially could get four checks,” Mr. Vilsack said in an interview. He is also helping schools, hospitals and other institutions to buy food grown locally, and investors to build meatpacking plants and other processing facilities to free farmers from powerful middlemen.American Farms Are DisappearingAs agriculture consolidates, fewer operations grow more crops.

    Source: U.S. Department of AgricultureBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Federal Money Is All Over Milwaukee. Biden Hopes Voters Will Notice.

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    White House officials have barnstormed Wisconsin to make the connection between big changes and their signature laws.Across Milwaukee, residents can see evidence of federal money from laws passed under the Biden administration, if they know where to look.It shows up in a growing array of solar panels near the airport. Ramshackle houses rehabilitated and sold to first-time buyers. The removal of lead paint and pipes. The demolition of a derelict mall. A crime lab and emergency management center. A clinic and food pantry for people with H.I.V. Funding to help dozens of nonprofits provide services like violence prevention efforts and after-school programs.But of the more than $1 billion for Milwaukee County in the American Rescue Plan Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act — legislation that President Biden counts among his greatest accomplishments — much is harder to see, like funds to prevent drastic cuts to public safety during the pandemic. Some money has yet to be spent, like $3.5 million to rebuild the penguin exhibit at the local zoo and $5.1 million to repair the roof of Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport.That presents both an opportunity and a challenge to Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign as it seeks to show Americans how federal investments have improved their lives. Doing so is difficult because the laws delegated many spending decisions to state and local officials, obscuring the money’s source.“The link between the resources themselves and anything that happens on the ground that’s visible to people is very opaque,” said Robert Kraig, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Citizen Action of Wisconsin. “You need to find some way to communicate this idea that there’s concrete progress within people’s communities that improves quality of life — and that there’s more coming.”Vivent Health, a newly constructed facility in Milwaukee that offers services to people with H.I.V.Sara Stathas for The New York TimesSolar panels installed atop the Milwaukee Central Library, which includes a green roof.Sara Stathas for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    TSMC Will Receive $6.6 Billion to Bolster U.S. Chip Manufacturing

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    Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company plans to build an additional factory and upgrade another planned facility in Phoenix with the federal grants.The Biden administration will award up to $6.6 billion in grants to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the leading maker of the most advanced microchips, in a bid to bring some of the most cutting-edge semiconductor technology to the United States.The funds, which come from the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, will help support the construction of TSMC’s first major U.S. hub, in Phoenix. The company has already committed to building two plants at the site and will use some of the grant money to build a third factory in Phoenix, U.S. officials said on Sunday. TSMC will also increase its total investments in the United States to more than $65 billion, up from $40 billion.Federal officials view the investment as vital for building up a reliable domestic supply of semiconductors, the small chips that power everything from phones and supercomputers to cars and fighter jets. Although semiconductors were invented in the United States, production has largely shifted overseas in recent decades. Only about 10 percent of the world’s chips are made in the United States.The award is the second largest by the federal government under a program intended to re-establish the United States as a leader in semiconductor manufacturing. Its unveiling comes a few weeks after President Biden announced that Intel, another major chipmaker, would receive $8.5 billion in grants and up to $11 billion in loans during a tour of battleground states meant to sell his economic agenda.The CHIPS Act, which lawmakers passed in 2022, gave the Commerce Department $39 billion to distribute as subsidies to incentivize companies to build and expand chip plants across the United States. The program is a major pillar of President Biden’s economic policy agenda, which is centered around strengthening American manufacturing.TSMC’s award will bring the total announced grants to more than $16 billion. Three other smaller companies, including GlobalFoundries, Microchip Technology and BAE Systems, received the first awards.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    As Wildfires Grow Fiercer, Some Companies Look to Rebuild the Tree Supply Chain

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    As forests succumb to ever-fiercer wildfires, the federal government and some adventurous private companies are trying to resuscitate an industry.When it came to wildfires, 2021 was an increasingly common kind of year in Montana: Flames consumed 747,000 acres, an area nearly the size of Long Island.About 2,700 of those acres were on Don Harland’s Sheep Creek Ranch, where ever-drier summers have turned lodgepole pines into matchsticks ready to ignite. After the smoke cleared, Mr. Harland found creeks running black with soot and the ground hardening more with every day that passed.A former timber industry executive, Mr. Harland knew the forest wouldn’t grow back on its own. The land is high and dry, the ground rocky and inhospitable — not like the rainy coastal Northwest, where trees grow thick and fast. Nor did he have the money to carry out a replanting operation, since growing for timber wouldn’t pay for itself; most of the nearby sawmills had shut down long ago anyway. The state government offered a few grants, but nothing on the scale needed to heal the scar.Then a local forester Mr. Harland knew suggested he get in touch with a new company out of Seattle, called Mast. After visiting to scope out the site, Mast’s staff proposed to replant the whole acreage, free, and even pay Mr. Harland a bit at the end. Mast, in turn, was to earn money from companies that wanted to offset their carbon emissions and would put millions of dollars into planting trees that otherwise wouldn’t exist.Mr. Harland said he had his doubts about the carbon-selling part of the plan, but he was impressed with Mast’s operations, so he said yes.Two years later, after seeds had been collected from similar trees on nearby lands, crews of planters came out with bags full of seedlings, rapidly plunking them into the ashen ground. As part of the deal, Mr. Harland signed an agreement to let the trees grow for at least 100 years, so they can keep sucking greenhouse gases out of the air as they mature.Can carbon credits help rebuild a forest? Tell us what you think. More

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    U.S. Awards Chip Supplier $162 Million to Bolster Critical Industries

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    The Biden administration said its second grant under a new program would help Microchip Technology expand its facilities in Oregon and Colorado.The Biden administration on Thursday announced plans to provide $162 million in federal grants to Microchip Technology, an Arizona-based semiconductor company that supplies the automotive, defense and other industries.The agreement is the second award announced under a new program intended to help ensure that American companies that rely on semiconductors have a stable supply. Last month, the Biden administration announced a $35 million grant for BAE Systems, a defense contractor.The investment will enable Microchip to increase its production of semiconductors that are used in cars, airplanes, appliances, medical devices and military products. The administration said it expected the award to create more than 700 jobs in construction and manufacturing.“Today’s announcement with Microchip is a meaningful step in our efforts to bolster the supply chain for legacy semiconductors that are in everything from cars to washing machines to missiles,” Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo said in a statement.Microchip plans to use $90 million to modernize and expand a facility in Colorado Springs and $72 million to expand a facility in Gresham, Ore. The administration said the funding would help Microchip triple its output at the two sites and decrease the company’s reliance on foreign facilities to help make its products.The company’s chips aren’t cutting-edge but are key components of nearly every military and space program. Microchip is one of the largest suppliers of semiconductors to the defense industrial base and a designated trusted foundry for the military. It also plays a crucial role in industries that are important for the national economy, U.S. officials said.That role became more obvious during the pandemic, when a global chip shortage cast a spotlight on domestic suppliers like Microchip. With foreign chip factories shut down to help contain the virus, automakers and other companies scrambled to secure supplies. As a result, demand for Microchip’s products surged.Those shortages also helped motivate lawmakers to pull together a funding bill aimed at shoring up American manufacturing and reduce reliance on foreign chips. The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act gave the Commerce Department $53 billion to invest in the semiconductor industry, including $39 billion for federal grants to encourage chip companies to set up U.S. facilities.The Commerce Department is expected to begin announcing larger awards in the coming months for major chip fabrication facilities owned by companies like Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, known as TSMC.Microchip previously announced plans to increase its capacity in both Oregon and Colorado, but the government funding would be used to expand those enhancements and bring more production back to the United States, officials said. According to its filings, Microchip relies on outside facilities to make a significant proportion of its products — roughly 63 percent of its net sales in 2023 — a relatively common practice in the industry.While attention has focused on ensuring that U.S. facilities can manufacture some of the world’s most advanced chips, there are growing concerns about Chinese investments in less advanced semiconductors, also known as legacy chips, which help power cars, computers, missiles and dishwashers.U.S. officials are questioning whether such investments could increase the United States’ reliance on China or allow Chinese firms to undercut competitors. The Commerce Department has said it plans to begin a survey this month to identify how U.S. companies are getting their legacy chips and reduce security risks linked to China.The deal announced Thursday is a nonbinding preliminary agreement. The Commerce Department will carry out due diligence on the project before reaching the award’s final terms.The department said it had received more than 570 statements of interest and more than 170 pre-applications, full applications and concept plans from companies and organizations interested in the funding.Don Clark More

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    Biden Administration Chooses Military Supplier for First CHIPS Act Grant

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    The award, which will go to BAE Systems, is part of a new government program aimed at creating a more secure supply of semiconductors.The Biden administration will announce on Monday that BAE Systems, a defense contractor, will receive the first federal grant from a new program aimed at shoring up American manufacturing of critical semiconductors.The company is expected to receive a $35 million grant to quadruple its domestic production of a type of chip used in F-15 and F-35 fighter jets, administration officials said. The grant is intended to help ensure a more secure supply of a component that is critical for the United States and its allies.The award is the first of several expected in the coming months, as the Commerce Department begins distributing the $39 billion in federal funding that Congress authorized under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. The money is intended to incentivize the construction of chip factories in the United States and lure back a key type of manufacturing that has slipped offshore in recent decades.Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, said on Sunday that the decision to select a defense contractor for the first award, rather than a commercial semiconductor facility, was meant to emphasize the administration’s focus on national security.“We can’t gamble with our national security by depending solely on one part of the world or even one country for crucial advanced technologies,” she said.Semiconductors originated in the United States, but the country now manufactures only about one-tenth of chips made globally. While American chip companies still design the world’s most cutting-edge products, much of the world’s manufacturing has migrated to Asia in recent decades as companies sought lower costs.Chips power not only computers and cars but also missiles, satellites and fighter jets, which has prompted officials in Washington to consider the lack of domestic manufacturing capacity a serious national security vulnerability.A global shortage of chips during the pandemic shuttered car factories and dented the U.S. economy, highlighting the risks of supply chains that are outside of America’s control. The chip industry’s incredible reliance on Taiwan, a geopolitical flashpoint, is also considered an untenable security threat given that China sees the island as a breakaway part of its territory and has talked of reclaiming it.The BAE chips that the program would help fund are produced in the United States, but administration officials said the money would allow the company to upgrade aging machinery that poses a risk to the facility’s continuing operations. Like other grants under the program, the funding would be doled out to the company over time, after the Commerce Department carries out due diligence on the project and as the company reaches certain milestones.“When we talk about supply chain resilience, this investment is about shoring up that resilience and ensuring that the chips are delivered when our military needs them,” said Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser.BAE, partly through operations purchased from Lockheed Martin, specializes in chips called monolithic microwave integrated circuits that generate high-frequency radio signals and are used in electronic warfare and aircraft-to-aircraft communications.The award will be formally announced at the company’s Nashua, N.H., factory on Monday. The facility is part of the Pentagon’s “trusted foundry” program, which fabricates chips for defense-related needs under tight security restrictions.In the coming months, the Biden administration is expected to announce much larger grants for major semiconductor manufacturing facilities run by companies like Intel, Samsung or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, known as TSMC.Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Ms. Raimondo said the grant was “the first of many announcements” and that the pace of those awards would accelerate in the first half of next year.The Biden administration is hoping to create a thriving chip industry in the United States, which would encompass the industry’s most cutting-edge manufacturing and research, as well as factories pumping out older types of chips and various types of suppliers to make the chemicals and other raw materials that chip facilities need.Part of the program’s focus has been establishing a secure source of chips to feed into products needed by the American military. The supply chains that feed into weapons systems, fighter jets and other technology are opaque and complex. Chip industry executives say that some military contractors have surprisingly little understanding of where some of the semiconductors in their products come from. At least some of the chip supply chains that feed into American military goods run through China, where companies manufacture and test semiconductors.Since Mr. Biden signed the CHIPS act into law, companies have announced plans to invest more than $160 billion in new U.S. manufacturing facilities in hopes of winning some portion of the federal money. The law also offers a 25 percent tax credit for funds that chip companies spend on new U.S. factories.The funding will be a test of the Biden administration’s industrial policy and its ability to pick the most viable projects while ensuring that taxpayer money is not wasted. The Commerce Department has spun up a special team of roughly 200 people who are now reviewing company applications for the funds.Tech experts expect the law to help reverse a three-decade-long decline in the U.S. share of global chip manufacturing, but it remains uncertain just how much of the industry the program can reclaim.While the amount of money available under the new law is large in historical proportions, it could go fast. Chip factories are packed with some of the world’s most advanced machinery and are thus incredibly expensive, with the most advanced facilities costing tens of billions of dollars each.Industry executives say the cost of operating a chip factory and paying workers in the United States is higher than many other parts of the world. East Asian countries are still offering lucrative subsidies for new chip facilities, as well as a large supply of skilled engineers and technicians.Chris Miller, a professor of Tufts University who is the author of “Chip War,” a history of the industry, said there was “clear evidence” of a major increase in investment across the semiconductor supply chain in the United States as a result of the law.“I think the huge question that remains is how enduring will these investments be over time,” he said. “Are they one-offs or will they be followed by second and third rounds for the companies involved?”Don Clark More

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    Bidder Aims to Save Bankrupt Trucking Firm Yellow

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    The plan would put Yellow back on the road with thousands of unionized drivers, but would force the government to wait longer for a loan repayment.When Yellow abruptly shuttered its operations in the summer and filed for bankruptcy protection, few thought that a buyer would emerge and try to revive the long-troubled trucking giant.Now a prominent trucking executive has assembled a last-minute plan to acquire Yellow out of bankruptcy — a proposal that seeks not only to rehire many of the company’s employees but also to work with their union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to create a healthy business.The plan rests on getting the Treasury Department to allow Yellow to postpone repayment of a $700 million rescue loan that it made to the company in 2020. The Treasury may not accept the plan because there are legal obstacles to extending the loan. And it stands to be repaid sooner under the plan that Yellow has already filed in the Delaware bankruptcy court, which involves selling the company’s terminals and other assets to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. Some trucking analysts say reviving Yellow will be hard because many customers will have moved on to other trucking companies that are much better run than the old Yellow.But Sarah Riggs Amico, the trucking executive leading the deal, said only her plan could bring back thousands of jobs, adding that she had the experience to build a leaner company in partnership with the Teamsters and assemble an executive team that can win back customers.“Restructuring Yellow provides an opportunity to bring back tens of thousands of fair-wage, union truck-driving jobs while bolstering America’s supply chain,” said Ms. Riggs Amico, the executive chairwoman of Jack Cooper, a private auto-hauling trucking company. “Who wouldn’t find that a worthy effort?”Under the proposal, Ms. Riggs Amico’s group would extend the Treasury loan so that it would be repaid in 2026 instead of next year, according to a person familiar with the bid. The group would also borrow $1.1 billion to pay off other secured creditors and bankruptcy lenders, and provide the new company with cash to operate. And it would issue $1.5 billion of preferred shares to unsecured creditors — the biggest of which is the Central States Pension Fund — that don’t get all their claims paid in bankruptcy. The Central States fund would get some $500 million of the preferred shares, according to the plan, far less than the $4.8 billion that Yellow owes it.Ms. Riggs Amico’s bid will be submitted to the bankruptcy court on Tuesday, when an auction to sell Yellow’s assets will take place.Ms. Riggs Amico and other female executives would own 51 percent of the new company, which would be separate from Jack Cooper. The new Yellow plans to employ some 15,000 people, according to the person familiar with the plan, down from 30,000 earlier this year.“The Teamsters have a framework agreement to lay the foundation for good union jobs, fair wages and strong benefits once a new company is in place,” Kara Deniz, a Teamsters spokeswoman, said in a statement.Government labor market data suggest that roughly 10,000 Yellow employees have found jobs elsewhere, said Avery Vise, vice president of trucking at FTR, a forecasting firm that focuses on the freight industry.That implies that some 20,000 Yellow employees are still looking for work. “I have a lot of friends that are still without jobs,” said Mark Roper, a former Yellow driver from McDonough, Ga., who found a job at another trucking company. “I have a lot of friends that are on the verge of losing their house.”Sarah Riggs Amico, the trucking executive leading a bid for Yellow, ran in a U.S. Senate primary in 2020.Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressThough bringing back lost trucking jobs and resurrecting a unionized company may appear attractive goals to the labor-friendly Biden administration, the Treasury may not believe it has the legal authority to extend the loan — it was made under the CARES Act, passed to provide relief early in the pandemic — and it may have qualms about further backing a company that struggled for years.“There is no clear authority for Treasury to compromise the claim in any way that does not maximize returns for the U.S. government,” said Adam Levitin, a law professor at Georgetown University who specializes in bankruptcy.In a statement, a Treasury spokesperson said: “Treasury is one of several creditors taking part in the bankruptcy process. We will continue to work to ensure taxpayers, and impacted workers and their families are treated fairly.”Thomas Nyhan, the executive director of the Central States Pension Fund, said on Sunday that the fund was trying to determine the financial benefit of each plan as the terms of the rescue bid changed. And he said there may be a legal obstacle: The Employee Retirement Income Security Act generally prevents a pension fund from owning securities issued by companies contributing to the fund — the preferred stock under the Yellow rescue plan — though there can be exemptions. “This is a very complicated problem,” Mr. Nyhan said. “We haven’t come to a conclusion, mainly because the deal keeps evolving.”Members of Congress from both parties have written to the Treasury, urging it to consider extending its loan, including Senators Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, and Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts. Mr. Hawley wrote this month that assisting the sale of Yellow to an acquirer was “a common-sense step to keep Yellow’s trucks on the road, and keep its work force gainfully employed.”The Treasury’s loan came from a pot of money to help companies designated as crucial to national security. It drew scrutiny because of the links between Yellow and the Trump administration, and because the Justice Department had sued the company, accusing it of overcharging the Department of Defense for freight services. Yellow last year agreed to pay a $7 million fine to resolve the case.Yellow was a big player — another is Old Dominion — in the less-than-truckload sector, in which a truck will carry goods for more than one customer. Companies in the sector often have a network of terminals and warehouses to store goods between shipments and typically travel shorter distances than truckload companies, whose vehicles carry goods for one customer over longer distances.Analysts say Yellow underperformed because it failed to effectively integrate big acquisitions and because it had higher costs, which some attribute in part to the unionization of its work force.Ms. Riggs Amico, a Democratic primary candidate in Georgia for the U.S. Senate in 2020, has experience restructuring Teamster trucking companies. She oversaw Jack Cooper’s acquisition of two auto-hauling trucking companies with Teamster work forces, and her plan for Yellow envisions hiring executives who specialize in the less-than-truckload business. (Jack Cooper, whose employees belong to the Teamsters, itself filed for bankruptcy in 2019.)Some of Yellow’s rivals are interested in snapping up its terminals under the current plan in Delaware bankruptcy court. Estes Express has submitted a stalking horse bid — an offer intended to set a minimum price for assets — of $1.53 billion for Yellow’s shipment centers. That sum would provide enough cash to pay off the Treasury and a secured loan of around $500 million now held by Citadel, a Wall Street firm. Ms. Riggs Amico’s plan would pay off Citadel but ask the Treasury to extend its loan. Some experts say this would mean taxpayers were taking a back seat to Wall Street.“It’s helping private parties make money off of a distressed-debt investment, and there’s no real reason for Treasury to do that,” Mr. Levitin, the Georgetown professor, said.Citadel declined to comment.In Congress, those open to Ms. Riggs Amico’s bid acknowledge that other creditors would be getting ahead of Treasury but think the compromise a necessary evil to save jobs.But it is not clear whether there would be much room left for a resurrected Yellow. Trucking experts say the market is gradually coping with the loss of the company, which once accounted for roughly 12 percent of drivers in the less-than-truckload sector. Mr. Vise, the trucking analyst, said Yellow’s exit had pushed trucking rates higher as customers scrambled to find other carriers. But he expects the sector to heal soon.“Yellow’s shutdown did not seriously disrupt the less-than-truckload market,” he said. More

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    A Push for Tech Hubs in Overlooked Places Picks 31 to Vie for Money

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    A new federal program will be a test of whether spreading funds outside of big cities will result in economic gains, or in inefficiencies.The Biden administration said on Monday that it had chosen 31 regions as potential recipients of federal money that would seek to fund innovation in parts of the country that government investment overlooked in the past.The announcement was the first phase of a program that aims to establish so-called tech hubs around the country across a variety of cutting-edge industries, like quantum computing, precision medicine and clean energy. In the coming months, the regions will compete for a share of $500 million, with roughly five to 10 of the projects receiving up to about $75 million each, the administration said.The program will test a central idea of a bipartisan bill that lawmakers passed last year: that science and technology funding should not just be concentrated in Silicon Valley and a few thriving coastal regions but flow to parts of the country that are less populated or have historically received less government funding.Proponents of the program say these investments can tap into pools of workers and economic resources that are not reaching their full potential, and improve the American economy as well as its technological abilities.But it remains to be seen if dispatching money to more remote places, which struggle with issues like an outflow of young workers, will ultimately be the most efficient way to use government funding to promote technological gains.The 31 finalists were chosen from nearly 400 applicants, the Commerce Department said. They include proposals to manufacture semiconductors in New York and Oregon, design autonomous systems for transportation and agriculture in Oklahoma, research biotechnology in Indiana and process critical minerals in Missouri.In Washington on Monday, President Biden said these tech hubs would bring together private industry, educational institutions, state and local governments, tribes, and organized labor to produce “transformational” research.“We’re doing this from coast to coast, and in the heartland and red states and blue states, small towns, cities of all sizes,” Mr. Biden added. “All this is part of my strategy to invest in America and invest in Americans.”Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said in an interview on Monday that the tech hub program, which he had devised with Senator Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, had helped to secure bipartisan support for the CHIPS and Science Act last year.The legislation included $200 billion for basic scientific research, and more than $75 billion in grants and tax credits for semiconductor companies. It aimed to lower the country’s dependence on foreign manufacturers of computer chips and other critical technology.Mr. Schumer said “it was a very big selling point” for the overall bill that the funding was not just going to “three or four cities in blue states.”“There was such divisiveness in the country, the coasts and non-coasts, and a lot of it was because all these new tech and high-end industries were locating on the coasts,” he said. “And so we crafted the tech hub program to be spread throughout the middle of America.”Mr. Schumer was touring Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse on Monday to celebrate the inclusion of two New York proposals, one focused on semiconductor manufacturing and the other on battery technology.“There’s a lot of talent here that’s not used,” he added.Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, described the tech hub program as “a grand experiment” in industrial policy.Mr. Muro said the United States had seen the incredible strength of concentrating technology investments in a few key places like Silicon Valley, where companies in related businesses can benefit by clustering together. But those investment patterns have also resulted in tremendous imbalances in the country’s economy, where “only a few places are truly prospering and much talent and much innovation is left on the table,” he said.“This is a whole different map,” Mr. Muro said, adding, “I think we need to make some experiments and some of them will probably be great investments.”The announcements tried to balance several competing goals of the tech hubs, including whether to invest in as many regions as possible — or whether to concentrate spending in a few areas in hopes of engineering radical economic improvement in those areas. They also reflected the high interest in the program from regional officials and their representatives in Congress.The administration is also trying to do as much as possible with initial funding for the program that remains well below the maximum levels lawmakers set in the CHIPS bill. While that bill authorized Congress to fund a variety of programs, lawmakers still need to greenlight actual money for many of the tech hub investments, as well as other programs.Given those financial constraints, some supporters of the program said on Monday that they hoped administration officials would ultimately focus most of the money on a small set of the announced hubs. Ideally, “you’d be extremely narrow about who gets funding,” said John Lettieri, president and chief executive of the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington think tank. “The more narrow the better.”The later round of funding announcements, he added, “is where we have to be pretty ruthless about shielding the process from politics as much as possible.”Madeleine Ngo More