President Donald Trump on Wednesday held up Intel’s plan to invest more than $7 billion in an Arizona factory as a win for his economic agenda.
Trump was the second president to celebrate the computer chip maker’s attempts to expand its domestic production at the same facility in Chandler, Arizona, outside Phoenix.
In 2012, Obama went to the factory’s construction site and celebrated that the plant would produce “some of the fastest and most powerful computer chips on Earth”.
But by 2014, however, Intel had pulled back from finishing the factory.
The company said Wednesday that it now expects to open the plant known as “Fab 42” within four years.
Like Obama, Trump declared it a win for workers.
Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny doesn’t care which administration got the deal done but is just happy Intel will resume its plans.
“Any help we got or any nudge we got from the president, I will personally thank him,” Tibshraeny said Wednesday.
“We had the last president, President Obama was out at Fab 42 probably four or five years ago when we first started that project so the White House of both administrations saw that this is a really important worldwide project.”
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in an Oval Office visit with Trump that the factory will employ about 3,000 workers directly —and 10,000 workers in Arizona in support of the factory.
Intel has not been a universal fan of Trump’s policies. It was among the tech companies that filed a legal brief that challenged the president’s 90-day ban on travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries.
The announcement also comes as Intel has shed jobs.
(AP)
