In 2017 the Taiwanese company Foxconn entered into negotiations with the State of Wisconsin on a plant to be built outside Racine which, in its ultimate form, would include a $10 billion investment by Foxconn, substantial tax breaks given to Foxconn with waiving of environmental regulations by the state, and 13,000 jobs. There was a groundbreaking ceremony in 2018. In 2021 the project was “scaled back” to less than $1 billion in investments by Foxconn with fewer than 1,500 jobs to be created. To the best of my knowledge no construction has been done on the site which was eminent domained for the purpose. The state and county lost a substantial amount of revenue; people were forced out of their homes.
In his Washington Post column Henry Olsen crows:
Companies such as Panasonic and Intel seem to be tripping over themselves to announce that they will build new plants in the United States to manufacture car batteries and semiconductors. The recently passed Chips and Science Act and other government subsidies are a big reason for these decisions. That’s good news for national security and for American workers.
Semiconductors are the bread and butter of high technology. Made from incredibly thin silicon wafers, semiconductor chips carry electric charges to help power our phones, computers and cars. Without a steady supply of semiconductors, any advanced economy would come to a standstill.
Anything that valuable is crucial to a nation’s security. If a hostile nation obtained control over a large portion of chip factories, it could economically blackmail its foes, much as the Arab oil embargo in the mid-1970s wrought havoc on the global economy.
As with other crucial manufacturing capabilities, the United States has steadily outsourced semiconductor fabrication to plants in Asia over the past 30 years. Even though the semiconductor was invented in the United States, only about 11 percent of global production takes place here. Fully two-thirds occurs in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan — which are all threatened by China’s rise. Given that Communist China is trying to create its own semiconductor industry to dominate global production, it’s not hard to imagine a future in which Chinese power threatens our advanced economy.
That’s why the passage of the Chips bill was vital to our national security. It allocated $52 billion in government money to help semiconductor firms build plants in the United States, offsetting much of the cost disadvantage that had driven production away. Ten new chip foundries are already planned for the United States within the next three years, and many more will surely be announced in the coming months.
In general I make a practice of not getting too excited based on announcements or press releases, reserving my interest until I see what actually emerges. Maybe that’s because I hail from the “Show Me” state.
Shorter: don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.
Trump supporters had already counted these chickens. I suspect they wont believe you and will insist that the chickens were stolen. Stop the (Chicken) steal!
Steve