The Biden administration has reached an agreement to provide up to $6.4 billion in direct funding for Samsung Electronics to develop a computer chip manufacturing and research cluster in Texas.

The funding announced Monday by the Commerce Department is part of a total investment in the cluster that, with private money, is expected to exceed $40 billion. The government support comes from the CHIPS and Science Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 with the goal of reviving the production of advanced computer chips domestically.

“The proposed project will propel Texas into a state of the art semiconductor ecosystem,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on a call with reporters. “It puts us on track to hit our goal of producing 20% of the world’s leading edge chips in the United States by the end of the decade.”

Raimondo said she expects the project will create at least 17,000 construction jobs and more than 4,500 manufacturing jobs.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    High-speed rail funding, semiconductor factory funding… Why the fuck is Texas getting these federal perks when they’ve been fighting Biden the entire time?

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Neoliberal bargaining strategy…

      Anyone that’s already “blue” you ignore, because they have no other options to vote for.

      So you continually give preference to conservatives in the hopes you can pull some into the Democratic party. This pulls the Dem party more conservative and perpetuates the problem.

      It’s pretty much why 1/3 of the country doesn’t vote, and the only time in modern history Dems ran a progressive campaign, we flipped a bunch of red states.

      We can easily do that again, it’s not difficult. It’s just not the direction party leaders want to take the party. They’d rather lose elections than move left.

      • Ragdoll X@lemmy.worldBanned
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        1 year ago

        Everything I see in the news about how the dems are bending over backwards to please republicans leads me to believe that the senior democratic party members are genuinely just fucking stupid.

        I guess that’s to be expected since half of them are like 300 years old, but it’s still really annoying to watch them just let democracy be destroyed for the sake of decorum.

        • Optional@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It’s at least forty years of history. After Reagan ran the table in 84, the DNC caved utterly and completely and just about never recovered.

          Just an endless stream of faceless, well coiffed men in khakis and oxfords blabbering about values or some shit. Such a pathetic run of losing that even against trump they dug deep and lost that one.

        • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Our run by abunch of Republicans who ran as Democrats. Maybe they influtreded the party long ago and both are right wing. One just less so.

    • Kelly@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Ideally where funds are invested would be decided without fear or favor.

      • bhmnscmm@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Nah, I think partisan special treatment is exactly what we need more of. What could go wrong making eligibility for federal projects and funds contingent on the state being represented by the correct party.

        Obvious /s.

    • SkabySkalywag@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not by choice I’m sure. Kinda like our public school books. It’s a numbers and -hopefully-long game.

  • cygon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Anyone remember the Foxconn building deal during the Trump presidency? It was supposed to prop Republicans up in the mid-terms of 2018.

    The GOP offered a $2.85 billion subsidy so Foxconn would build an LCD panel manufacturing plant in Wisconsin. Apparently the subsidy was in the form of tax credits. Trump calls Foxconn “8th wonder of the world” despite its cost.

    According to The Verge:

    The renovations never arrived. Neither did the factory, the tech campus, nor the thousands of jobs. Interviews with 19 employees and dozens of others involved with the project, as well as thousands of pages of public documents, reveal a project that has defaulted on almost every promise. The building Foxconn calls an LCD factory — about 1/20th the size of the original plan — is little more than an empty shell. In September, Foxconn received a permit to change its intended use from manufacturing to storage.

    As far as I can tell (from skimming over a few recent news articles), they ultimately employed about 1000 people (7%-10% of what was promised). When negative reporting on the project ramped up, Republicans claimed that incoming Democratic governor Tony Evers tried to renegotiate the deal and blamed him. When that turned out to be a lie, Republicans pivoted to the more nebulous claim that Foxconn bailed because Wisconsin was unfriendly to business under its fresh Democratic governor.

    This could be a great side-by-side comparison on how Dems vs. Reps handle such a project, but I doubt the average person caught in the news cycle still remembers Foxconn after nearly 6 years). 😅