IBM welcomes the opportunity to provide input to the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC). We believe the TTC is a unique opportunity for the EU and the US to forge global technology rules based on their shared values and their commitments to open markets and fair competition. The TTC has the potential to become an agile framework that will help the transatlantic partners drive technological innovation, economic growth and job creation, generate the trust and resilience that our interconnected economy needs, as well as create solutions for the energy transition.

To that end, IBM believes the EU and the US should prioritize collaboration in research and open trade in critical technologies such as semiconductors, AI, Cloud and Quantum.

Please find attached the full list of IBM's recommendations to the TTC.

Working Group 3: Secure Supply Chains

IBM fully supports the U.S. and the EU’s objective to strengthen their technology capabilities and the resilience of their supply chains. For example, we welcomed the US and the EU Chips Acts to ensure both sides’ respective ability to rely on effective semiconductor infrastructure. In the area of critical technologies, we believe the EU and the US should further strengthen research collaboration, prioritizing investment in advanced chip R&D, design and prototyping, and packaging, as well as creating a pipeline of skilled workers who can continue to unlock future developments in technologies such as semiconductors.

More specifically, both sides should establish mechanisms to promote cooperation between researchers, laboratories, academia, industry and governments, together with support from public-private partnerships, in order to accelerate research breakthroughs, prototyping and ambitious scaling of innovation. Such multi-stakeholder collaboration should promote next-generation semiconductor advances:

- Beyond regularly sharing information and identifying gaps in the supply chains, EU-U.S. collaboration could help both sides create complementarity and mutual synergies to boost R&D equipment and facilities, design and manufacturing capabilities (including prototyping to speed up “lab to fab” processes), and technological know-how to fuel leading-edge semiconductor breakthroughs, such as the Vertical-Transport Nanosheet Field Effect Transistor (VTFET), and accelerate their introduction into consumer and industrial applications more quickly.

- Both the EU and U.S. should include like-minded allies, such as Japan, into these collaboration mechanisms.

- The EU and U.S. should focus on enabling the development of skills and necessary know-how for future technology developments in Semiconductors, Quantum or AI. This could for example include exchange programs for EU and U.S. researchers (where expertise is rare such as in semiconductors and where both sides could partner with universities and vocational colleges to attract new talent and build a pipeline of future skilled workers), as well as reskilling programs for under-served communities, notably those with high unemployment post-Covid or with lack of access to higher education).