As Biden celebrates computer chip factories, voters wait for the promised production to start

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has a great economic story to tell voters in a decade, less so in 2024.

On Thursday, the Democratic president will go to New York state to celebrate Micron Technology’s plans to build a campus of computer chip factories, made possible in part with government support. But the initial phase of the project would see the first plant open in 2028 and the second plant in 2029, with more time expected before the next two plants are completed.

As he eyes a rematch with Republican Donald Trump, Biden is asking voters to believe in a vision for the U.S. economy that is still largely a promise. This comes at a time when voters are most concerned about the continued pressure of high inflation, which has led most to rate Biden poorly on the economy.

Biden is campaigning for the future, just as Trump, the former president, is drawing on a past in which American manufacturing was the world standard. The Democrat is trying to convince voters to think about how historians will later remember his presidency.

“We’re going to look back on this in 20 years and talk about what a revolutionary period this was for the country,” Biden told unionized electricians last week. “We are really going to make a huge difference.”

It’s a unique message in an age of almost instant gratification. Compared to when Biden entered politics in the 1970s, people can instantly stream music and videos on their smartphones, order a pizza with the tap of a finger, or text a friend thousands of miles away.

Trump, for his part, is telling voters that Biden’s policies will hurt jobs related to making gasoline cars and ultimately send work to China. On Tuesday, he vented how the rising value of the dollar against foreign currencies would hamper American production by making American goods too expensive.

“It sounds good to stupid people, but it is a disaster for our manufacturers and others,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They are effectively unable to compete and will be forced to either lose a lot of business, or build factories, or whatever, in the ‘smart’ countries.”

The former president, at a recent rally in Pennsylvania, lamented the loss of factory jobs that once made the United States “the greatest country in the history of the world,” saying the country has since “lost its confidence, willpower and vision.”

The Biden administration helped jump-start the Micron project by agreeing to provide $6.1 billion in government support that will also cover a memory chip factory in Idaho that would be operational in 2026. The money also helps pay for the first two factories in Clay, New York. but not the second pair opened later. The funding is part of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which, along with the government’s funding for renewable energy projects, has boosted factory construction spending to record levels.

Plants are also planned for Intel in Arizona and Ohio, TSMC in Arizona, Samsung in Texas and other chipmakers. Their efforts will power artificial intelligence and electric vehicles, among other technologies that Biden says will strengthen America’s position as the world’s largest economy. Biden has gone to Arizona and Ohio to celebrate chip factories and went to New York earlier in 2022 for the Micron project.

For decades, voters have heard politicians promise a manufacturing boom, without much to show for it. Factory employment peaked in the late 1970s and has steadily declined due to automation, outsourcing to low-cost countries and the closures that accompany every recession.

Celebrating the Micron project, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, noted that Trump, while president, famously told voters that electronics manufacturer Foxconn would open a sprawling string of factories in Wisconsin.

At the time, Trump took a victory lap, saying the Taiwan-headquartered company would bring manufacturing jobs to the United States.

“I’ll tell you they wouldn’t have done it here if I didn’t become president, so that’s good,” Trump said in June 2018.

That project has become infamous and has fueled a sense of cynicism about what the government can do. Microsoft agreed to buy the land for a data center in 2023 after Foxconn failed to deliver on the 13,000 jobs it promised.

Schumer said in an interview that voters will notice that this time is different, predicting that they will see the United States as ahead of China in the technologies essential to national security and economic growth, creating more jobs and necessary technology can remain in America.

“We want to be proud of our economy and there was too much of a feeling that we were losing to China and other countries,” Schumer said.