By now, we've all seen, or at least heard, about Intel CEO's Brian Kraznich Fab 42
announcement (done from the Oval Office, no less). It was to be a joint press conference to announce a highly impactful investment on U.S. soil, which also turned into some welcome PR for Intel, and got the CEO some face time with the President.
It has to be said though, that hailing this as a Trump administration win is simply politics doing its best: spinning the truth for its own benefit. I say this because the original announcement for the construction of this Arizona fab was done way back in 2011, with then Intel CEO Paul Otellini
breaking the news that they would spend $5 billion on the plant during the Obama Administration. Construction started that year, with overall expectation for its completion being somewhere around 2013. Cue the usual delays, and enter 2013's
10% decline of the PC market, and Intel did what any sensible company would do in the wake of lower expected volume of shipments (and respectively lower production needs) - they
postponed the opening of the factory, indefinitely, instead choosing to improve manufacturing capability of its then already-operational fabs. So, the factory
wasn't announced because of President Trump's policies and overall government acumen, nor is it probably going to be finished by the time his first term ends.
Krzanich didn't make this announcement because the "tax and regulatory policies" of the Trump administration are "advantageous". Kraznich did it in a show of force and open support for President Trump (as Kraznich
has a past of doing), and if there's one thing we know of Intel (and every other major corporation focused on profit) is that
everything happens for the bottom-line. The question of "why now" isn't answered with "because of President Trump's policies". It's answered by Krzanich's
internal memo to Intel employees: because growing demand means Intel must increase production capacity. A sign of the times is the fact that the Arizona fab was originally projected to push Intel's 14 nm manufacturing capability, but has now been re-purposed as an accelerator towards Intel's 7 nm aspirations.
Although it has to be said, as President Trump himself would, that Arizona workers will be very happy: 10,000 jobs is a whole big number - full of zeroes. Arizona is second only to Nevada in overall population growth rate, and job creation is one of the most important economic growth factors. Though that's not the real number of workers: that's the best-case scenario. The real number of direct jobs to be created by this investment is around 3,000, with up to 10,000 jobs being created "in support" of the factory, as Kraznich himself put it (such as new businesses opening to support the infrastructure and the increased number of employed workers).
In fact, President Trump's administration hasn't even made a concrete, thought-out move towards tax breaks on American companies, though he did promise a 15% reduction in taxes
while campaigning. So far, the only thing they've done on that camp is freezing new and outstanding regulations to fall into place, as well as adopting a purely "less is better" approach to tax regulation:
for every new tax regulation, cut two previously existing ones".