President-elect Donald Trump is unlikely to roll back the Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science Act, despite his campaign rhetoric on the bill, experts say. 

The legislation, which provides incentives for chipmakers to set up manufacturing in the U.S., became a point of contention in the final month of the election cycle.

Trump criticized the bill and its price tag. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, then said that his party “probably will” try to repeal the law. Johnson later walked the statement back.

Still, the key Biden policy, which has massive implications for Asian chips makers like TSMC and Samsung, is likely safe in the near term, according to chip experts. 

Despite signaling he’s “not thrilled” about the bill, Trump is probably not going to roll it back, Paul Triolo, senior vice president for China and technology policy lead at Albright Stonebridge, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday.

“There’s support for this kind of onshoring of advanced manufacturing,” he added. 

The Biden administration signed the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act in August 2022, committing almost $53 billion to invest in domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research with the aim of boosting  U.S. competitiveness with China.

The former president made headlines in October by attacking the legislation as a “bad” deal during a three hour interview with popular podcaster Joe Rogan. 

“We put up billions of dollars for rich companies to come in and borrow the money and build chip companies here, and they’re not going to give us the good companies anyway,” he said, arguing instead that his proposal to increase tariffs would attract chip companies for free. 

The allocation of the CHIPS Act has been slow, with the lion’s share of the earmarked funds yet to be doled out.

So far, the bill has attracted Asian chip makers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung to build U.S. facilities. The two companies have already been offered $6.6 billion and $6.4 billion, respectively. 

The largest CHIPS Act beneficiary has been the American chip maker Intel, which has been awarded $8.5 billion in funding.

While Trump may want to modify and change some of the priorities of the bill and its fund allocation, he’s expected to leave most of it intact.

The Trump administration will probably try to reinterpret the bill “so they can spread the money a little differently than Biden, but I don’t think they’re going to roll it back,” Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday. 

Posen said that this would mirror what Biden had done by leaving Trump’s China tariffs in place when he took office, despite pivoting to a more industrial policy focused strategy. 

“But I do think there’ll be much more expansion on the tariff front, rather than industrial policy expanding,” he added. 

Qualcomm reported fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday that beat Wall Street expectations for earnings and revenue, and the company guided to a strong December quarter.

The shares rose 10% in extended trading at one point before falling to a gain of about 4%.

Here’s how the company did versus Refinitiv consensus expectations for the quarter ending Sept. 29:

• Earnings per share: $2.69, adjusted $2.56 expected
• Revenue: $10.24 billion versus $9.90 billion expected

Qualcomm said it expects revenue in the current quarter of between $10.5 billion and $11.3 billion, with the midpoint of that range beating LSEG consensus expectations of $10.59 billion.

The company reported $2.92 billion in net income, or $2.59 per share, a sharp jump from last year’s $1.49 billion, or $1.23 per share. Qualcomm reported $33.19 billion in total revenue in its fiscal 2024, a 9% increase from 2023.

Qualcomm’s fortunes have historically been tied to the smartphone industry, where the company provides a range of chips to handset makers, including system-on-a-chip processors, modems, and antennas. The company makes the chip at the heart of most high-end Android devices, and many lower-end phones as well. Qualcomm also sells modems and related chips to Apple for its iPhones, and last year said its contract for 5G chips ran through 2026.

Qualcomm reported a 12% increase in handset chip sales to $6.1 billion, in line with FactSet estimates. Qualcomm introduced its high-end chip for 2025, called Snapdragon 8 Elite, in October.

“In handsets we delivered greater than 20% year-over-year growth in Android revenues,” said Qualcomm CFO Akash Palkhiwala on a call with analysts.

Under CEO Cristiano Amon, the company has diversified away from being a smartphone supplier and has introduced and invested heavily in producing chips for PCs, cars, and industrial machines.

“We will continue to transform Qualcomm from a wireless communications company into a connected computing company for the age of AI,” Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said on the earnings call with analysts.

Qualcomm has also made efforts to brand itself as a leader in AI, having developed smartphone chips with specialized parts for machine learning since 2017. But unlike Nvidia, the company doesn’t produce the kind of graphics processors for data centers that are used for big AI programs like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The automotive business grew 86% on an annual basis to $899 million in sales. Qualcomm says it has billions of dollars in business with automakers currently in its development pipeline, and highlighted it was the fifth consecutive quarter of growth. Qualcomm said that it expected automotive sales in the current quarter to rise 50% on an annual basis.

The company’s “internet of things” business includes both chips for industrial purposes as well as the chips Meta uses in its Quest handsets and Ray-Ban Smart Glasses. It also includes the new business selling chips for laptops running Microsoft Windows. The division reported $1.68 billion in revenue, a 22% increase from a year earlier.

Qualcomm’s chip business, including its handset, automotive, and other chips, which together is reported as QCT, saw sales rise 18% during the quarter to $7.37 billion in total. 

The company’s profitable technology licensing business, QTL, reported $1.52 billion in revenue, a 21% increase over the same period last year.

Qualcomm said its board had approved $15 billion in additional buybacks. During the fourth quarter, it repurchased $1.3 billion worth of shares and paid out $947 million in dividends.

WATCH: CNBC’s full interview with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon

Election Day proved hugely successful for the crypto industry. Nobody was a bigger winner than Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

Coinbase shares soared 31% on Wednesday, their best day on record, as investors celebrated the company’s victorious efforts to get pro-crypto candidates into office. Fairshake, the Coinbase-backed PAC, says that of the 58 candidates it supported, 46 won, with the remaining contests 12 still undecided.

Armstrong, who co-founded Coinbase in 2012 and took it public in 2021, remains the crypto exchange’s biggest investor, with ownership of well over 10% of the company’s outstanding shares. As of the latest proxy filing, he owned 34.8 million Class A and Class B shares, a stake that jumped by about $2.1 billion in value on Wednesday to almost $9 billion.

“Being anti-crypto is simply bad politics,” Armstrong wrote in a post on X, after Ohio Republican Bernie Moreno was declared the winner in his state’s Senate race over incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown.

In a lengthier follow-up post on Wednesday, Armstrong said “no matter how you slice it, this election was huge win for crypto.”

Bitcoin jumped over 9.5%, reaching a record of over $76,400.

A Coinbase spokesperson declined to comment further.

Some $40 million of crypto money was directed at defeating Brown, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. One PAC paid for five ads designed to boost awareness of Moreno, a blockchain entrepreneur with very little name recognition entering the race.

The Stand With Crypto Alliance, which Coinbase launched last year, gave Brown an “F” grade, while it issued Moreno an “A.”

Moreno flipped the seat, winning 50.3% of votes cast to 46.3% for Moreno, according to NBC News. His win helped ensure a majority for the Republicans in Senate, alongside Republican nominee Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential contest.

“I am so grateful to Ohioans for their resounding support in this race,” Moreno said in a statement Tuesday night. “I look forward to working with the new Republican Senate majority to fix our economy, secure our border, and return to American strength at home and abroad.”

Moreno’s statement made no mention of crypto, despite the fact that the industry bankrolled his campaign.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler sued Coinbase last year over claims that it sells unregistered securities. A judge has since ruled that the case should be heard by a jury. Coinbase has fought back vociferously, and has also said that it wants to work with regulators to come up with a proper set of laws governing the nascent industry.

Armstrong told CNBC in September that his visits to the nation’s capital used to take place once or twice a year. Then it got to be at least a quarterly occasion. And the pace has only increased.

“In the beginning, a lot of people didn’t know what crypto was,” Armstrong said of his earlier trips. Now, “the discussion has advanced, really, to, how do we pass clear rules, create legislation in the United States?”

In the 2024 election cycle, Coinbase was one of the top corporate donors, giving more than $75 million to Fairshake and its affiliate PACs, including a fresh pledge of $25 million to support the pro-crypto super PAC in the 2026 midterms. Armstrong personally contributed more than $1.3 million to a mix of candidates up and down the ballot.

Coinbase stayed out of the presidential contest and focused its finances exclusively on congressional races, in an effort to assemble a group of lawmakers with favorable views of the industry.

Coinbase’s big post-election pop more than makes up for the 15% drop in the stock last week after the company reported disappointing quarterly results due to lower transaction revenue and a drop in subscriptions services revenue.

Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, attended multiple fundraisers for Trump in the months before the election. As the results were rolling in Tuesday, Grewal said in a post on X that he hopes the SEC “understands what has happened tonight.”

“Stop suing crypto,” Grewal wrote. “Start talking to crypto. Initiate rulemaking now. There’s no reason to wait.”

Armstrong reposted the Grewal’s comments, adding one word of his own: “True.”

WATCH: Next congress will be ‘most pro-crypto congress’ ever