Donald Trump falsely claims only companies led by transgender executives can get CHIPS Act funding

President Donald Trump falsely claimed that a technology law signed by President Joe Biden requires chip manufacturers to hire transgender executives.

During a July 15 speech at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania, Trump went on a lengthy aside about the CHIPS Act, a bipartisan law that provides incentives for domestic semiconductor production.

“We had this ridiculous CHIPS Act where you give billions of dollars to a company, and they didn't even know what the hell to do with it. You give them billions of dollars, they say they're going to build, nobody knew what to do with it,” Trump said. “And of course, the standards were so high if you weren't transgender, as an example, uh, you didn't qualify. So they get the money, they hired— they look all over for transgender people to run the company, large portions. They couldn't find them. They weren't into the chip business, I guess.”

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That is false. The Trump administration has itself awarded $5 billion through the program, as Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik noted.

The CHIPS Act does not require companies receiving federal money to hire transgender employees, much less appoint transgender executives. Indeed, the word “transgender” does not appear in the lengthy statute.

Trump’s remarks fueled speculation online that he had confused “transgender” with “transistor,” but the CHIPS Act does not specifically mention transistors either.

Trump was more likely distorting Biden administration policies intended to increase the “diversity, capability, and flexibility of the STEM workforce,” falsely portraying them as a mandate to hire transgender people.

Hiltzik pressed the administration to explain Trump’s remarks. White House spokesman Kush Desai responded, “President Trump is right: the Biden administration infused left-wing, DEI priorities in the CHIPS program through non-statutory policies that mandated creating construction jobs for women, adding day-care facilities at construction sites, using costly renewable energy sources at manufacturing facilities, and other ideological provisions.”

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Those policies were administrative conditions, not provisions written into the CHIPS Act itself. The White House declined to provide examples of the policies Desai referenced, and none of the examples he cited involved transgender people.

Trump’s claim comes as his administration has repeatedly sided with employers accused of discriminating against transgender people and declined to investigate some complaints from transgender workers. Those actions mark a break from the Biden administration, but they are administrative decisions unrelated to the legislation Biden signed.