Trump Just Bragged About A $7 Billion Intel Factory. But There’s A Problem…
This week, the CEO of Intel met with Donald Trump and announced that they would be building a $7 billion factory in Arizona to manufacture the next generation of microchips, which would create about 3,000 jobs. Trump was all too pleased to take credit for the “deal,” but as usual, he’s congratulating himself for something he had nothing to do with.
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich was none too pleased to take part in the dog-and-pony show. “In a media-attended Oval Office meeting, Intel’s Brian Krzanich stood next to Trump and declared, with all the conviction of a hostage making a false confession, that the investment was a response to Trump’s business-friendly policies” writes the Guardian.
“It’s in support of the tax and regulatory policies that we see the administration pushing forward that really make it advantageous to do manufacturing in the US” said Krzanich.
But in reality, the Fab 42 factory in Arizona was originally announced in 2011 and has been a dormant project since 2014. Intel, knowing they could extract some tax breaks from Trump in exchange for doing what they were already planning to do, is playing Trump for a fool.
Analysts remark that market pressure to move to more sophisticated types of chips are more likely to have played a role in continuing the factory construction. “Now this announcement tonight is probably because of the semiconductor demand we have alluded to in great detail in recent weeks, more than it is about Trumponomics” says Neil Campling at Northern Trust Securities.
Trump chose not bring up the fact that last year, Intel announced it will cut 12,000 jobs, roughly 11 percent of its workforce.
It just goes to show that once again, there’s almost nothing behind Trump’s voodoo populism – like there wasn’t with the Carrier “deal” or the Softbank “deal,” or the Sprint jobs, or the Chrysler plant. But thanks to social media and complicit mainstream media, the truth behind these fake deals rarely gets the coverage that it deserves.
