Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson for suggesting that Republicans may try to repeal the CHIPS and Science Act if they win Congress, a remark he has since tried to walk back.

“I also want to speak to the comments that have been recently made by the speaker of the House,” Harris said in Milwaukee to a group of reporters. “It is just further evidence of everything that I’ve actually been talking about for months now, about [former President Donald] Trump’s intention to implement Project 2025.”

“We’ve talked repeatedly about their intention to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. Now to get rid of the CHIPS Act,” she added.

Speaker Johnson, R-La., made the comment at a Friday campaign event in New York for House Rep. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., a vulnerable GOP candidate in one of the most closely watched House races of this election cycle.

“I expect that we probably will, but we haven’t developed that part of the agenda yet,” Johnson said in response to a reporter asking whether the GOP would try to repeal the law.

The CHIPS Act passed Congress with bipartisan support in 2022. The law has unlocked nearly $53 billion of funding to build up domestic manufacturing of semiconductors, which are crucial for the growth of strategic industries such as artificial intelligence. The federal government has announced more than $30 billion of investments under the law as of August.

Harris has turned manufacturing investment into one of the central planks of her economic platform.

“It is my plan and intention to continue to invest in American manufacturing, the work being done by American workers upholding and lifting up good union jobs,” Harris said in Milwaukee. “That is the way we are going to win the competition with China for the 21st century.”

Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest producer of advanced chips, serving clients such as Apple and Nvidia, jumped more than 10% on Thursday morning after the company reported a 54% hike in net profit in the third quarter. The company expects annual revenue growth in the last three months of the year, as global chipmakers continue to benefit from demand boosted by AI applications.

Shares of chip companies rose on the results. Nvidia stock was up about 3%, Micron rose about 4% and AMD was up about 2% Thursday morning.

The company’s net income was 325.3 billion Taiwanese dollars ($10.1 billion) over the July-September quarter, surpassing an LSEG estimate of $300.2 billion Taiwanese dollars cited by Reuters.

Net revenue came in at $23.5 billion in the third quarter, up 36% year-on-year, with TSMC’s gross margin rising to 57.8% over July-September, compared with 54.3% in the same period of last year.

“Based on the current business outlook, we expect for our fourth-quarter revenue to be between $26.1 billion and $26.9 billion, which represents a 13% sequential increase or a 35% year-over-year increase at the midpoint,” TSMC Chief Financial Officer Wendell Huang said during an earnings call following the results release, according to a call transcript produced by FactSet.

In the third quarter, “our business was supported by strong smartphone and AI-related demand for our industry leading 3nm and 5nm technologies,” TSMC said in a statement, referencing its semiconductor nodes.

In the Thursday earnings call, TSMC Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei stressed that AI demand is “real” and that the company has experienced the “deepest and widest growth of anyone in this industry,” as a result.

“We have talked to our customers all the time, including our hyperscaler customers who are building their own chips. And almost every AI innovator is working with TSMC,” he said.

The company’s Taipei-listed shares have soared nearly 80% year-to-date, outpacing the 28.57% gains of the broader market over the same period.

TSMC now anticipates its capital expenditure for this year will pick up to slightly higher than $30 billion, it said during its earnings call. The firm’s capex costs edged higher to $6.4 billion in the third quarter, versus $6.36 billion across the three preceding months.

The Taiwanese chipmaker, whose advanced chips are vital to a swathe of products ranging from smartphones to AI applications, has been increasing its manufacturing presence worldwide, carrying out a vast overseas investment of $65 billion for three chip plants in Arizona to meet U.S. demand, as well as opening its first factory in Japan earlier this year.

TSMC’s earnings beat comes the same week as Netherlands-based ASML, which supplies machines to the Taiwanese company, issued a lower-than-expected forecast of net sales, sending shares tumbling.

Some market participants have questioned the long-term resilience of the AI boom and the return on increasing investments in the technology sector — while Young Liu, CEO and chairman of key Apple supplier Foxconn, told CNBC last week that the AI frenzy “still has some time to go,” as advanced language models evolve with each new iteration.

Correction: This article has been updated to accurately reflect that TSMC’s third-quarter net income hit 325.3 billion Taiwanese dollars.

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