Thanks to President Biden's historic policies: The Infrastructure Act, The Inflation Reduction Act, and The CHIPS and Science Act, we now have a manufacturing and business boom in the United States like we've never seen before.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is hard at work winning big investments and bringing good paying jobs to the state.
That's Democratic leadership in action, building back America from the 4 year Trump disaster which saw massive job loss and a manufacturing recession since 2019.
Those dark days are long gone. Manufacturing, new factories, and jobs are back thanks to Biden and the Democrats!
Gretchen Whitmer @gretchenwhitmerI will compete with anyone to bring good-paying jobs home to Michigan.
We’re hard at work winning crucial investments, like this one in Flint, that will benefit Michiganders in every part of our state. Let’s keep building a brighter future — together.https://twitter.com/gretchenwhitmer/status/1669400960425160706GM announcement, groundbreaking mark more than $1 billion investment in Flint
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joins state and local leaders to break ground on the Flint Commerce Center on June 5, 2023.Ceremonies on Monday celebrated more than $1.3 billion in economic investment for Flint’s industrial development.
At the first event, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joined local and state leaders and General Motors officials to mark GM’s investment of more than $1 billion in a pair of manufacturing facilities in the city.
GM will invest $815 million in the Flint Assembly plant to prepare it to build next-generation, internal-combustion heavy-duty trucks. Another $233 million from GM will go to press refurbishments and equipment upgrades at the Flint Metal Center.
“Today we are announcing significant investments in Flint to strengthen our industry-leading full-size pickup business by preparing two plants to build the next-generation ICE (internal combustion engine) HD (heavy duty) trucks,” Gerald Johnson, GM’s executive vice president of global manufacturing and sustainability, said in a prepared statement. “These investments reflect our commitment to our loyal truck customers and the efforts of the dedicated employees of Flint Assembly and Flint Metal Center.”
Whitmer tweeted that GM’s expansion plans for the two facilities “will keep hard-working men and women in good-paying union jobs and will maintain our status as the home of the auto industry’s electrified, high-tech future.”
The governor said the Flint projects “will help build out the Make It In Michigan plan I announced last week and bring us toward a common goal: a Michigan where more people can build their lives, be themselves, and get a great job.”
Unveiled during the Mackinac Policy Conference, “Make It In Michigan” is an initiative to boost investment in economic development projects, invest in education and “revitalize places in every region of the state.”
Mike Booth, the United Auto Workers vice president who heads the union’s GM department, lauded the investment in the Flint facilities.
“When business is booming as it has been for the past decade — due to the hard work of UAW members — the company should continue to invest in its workforce,” Booth said. “It is good to see that GM recognizes the hard work you, the UAW membership, contribute to the success of this company. We are proud that UAW-GM members will continue to build quality, union-made products here in the USA.”
Whitmer then led the second event, a groundbreaking ceremony to announce the start of redeveloping the massive former General Motors Buick City manufacturing campus. Joining Whitmer were other dignitaries including U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Flint), Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley, state Sen. John Cherry (D-Flint), state Rep. Cynthia Neeley (D-Flint) and Mott Foundation President and CEO Ridgway White.
Work will now begin on the first building of the new Flint Commerce Center industrial park, which is being developed by Ashley Capital, one of the United States’ largest privately held industrial real estate investment firms. The 330,000-square-foot building is expected to be ready for occupancy in the first quarter of 2024.
“We’ve made this massive investment because we think Flint is a good place to be, with an excellent partner in the city of Flint, strong workforce, great infrastructure, and ready access to expressways, rail, and abundant electricity,” said Susan M. Harvey, Senior Vice President for Ashley Capital.
Once a major General Motors manufacturing facility that covered hundreds of acres, Buick City closed at the end of 2010. With General Motors in bankruptcy proceedings, ownership of the site was eventually transferred to the Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response (RACER) Trust.
Ashley Capital closed on the first 20 acres of the site earlier this year and is working with RACER to acquire the remaining 330 acres by the end of August 2023. RACER continues to assess and remediate environmental issues at the site as part of its mandate and agreements with Ashley Capital.
The total investment of $300 million will construct up to 10 buildings, and is expected to create 3.5 million-square-feet of space and as many as 3,000 jobs.
The redevelopment effort is supported by approximately $3.25 million from the city of Flint’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, $2 million from the Flint-based Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and $8.5 million from the state’s Strategic Fund.
https://michiganadvance.com/2023/06/06/gm-announcement-groundbreaking-mark-more-than-a-1-billion-investment-in-flint/How Biden’s big investments spurred a factory boom
A surge in manufacturing construction across the country is grabbing the attention of economists and workers on the ground as legislative efforts to reinvigorate the U.S. industrial base are bearing fruit.
Experts say these changes have been long-awaited, and they represent a watershed moment for U.S. heavy industry and a shift toward more environmentally friendly methods of production amid an ongoing climate emergency.
“We waited for so long to have these kinds of initiatives,” Miki Banu, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan, told The Hill. “This is probably the first time in my life when I’ve seen so many resources become available, which are able to let us put our ideas into practice.”
Annual spending on manufacturing construction held somewhat steady during the 2010s, generally keeping within the range of $50 billion to $80 billion, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Levels were lower and the range of spending tighter in the decade before.
But following the passage of three large-scale economic packages loaded with tax incentives and direct funding for industrial projects and operations, investment in manufacturing construction shot up to $189 billion in April on a seasonally adjusted basis, more than doubling pre-pandemic levels.
Factory boom sets off hiring frenzyAccording to new experimental data from the Census Bureau, the construction build-out has happened especially fast in the Mountain division of the West region in the country, which includes states like Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. The South Central divisions, which is where the most manufacturing construction happens in the U.S., have also seen a marked rise.
Construction workers say there is more manufacturing activity happening in these regions than they’re currently prepared to handle.
“Honest to goodness, [the top of my agenda] is finding and training qualified manpower, because that’s what’s needed. We don’t have enough,” Courtenay Eichhorst, president of the New Mexico Building and Construction Trades Council, told The Hill.
“If somebody tells me they need a welder who can do X, Y and Z right now in the state of New Mexico, everybody that has those qualifications is already working.”
Eichhorst said he was working to meet the demands of companies including Facebook and Intel, as well the Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories.
Big federal investments are paying offThe 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law along with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and CHIPS and Science Act, both passed in 2022, are the main drivers behind the construction boom, economists say.
A portfolio of 21 manufacturing and recycling projects for the battery industry funded by $2.8 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and administered by the Department of Energy shows the kinds of facilities that are being primed for additional capital expenditures.
“The Inflation Reduction Act’s advanced manufacturing tax incentives provide a long-term investment signal for critical mineral processing and battery production, and the structure of the [IRA’s] tax credits for electric vehicles depends on domestic assembly and domestic batteries,” Trevor Higgins, a vice president at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank, testified to Congress earlier this year.
The incentives to reshape industrial production and operation in the U.S. included in the various legislative packages go beyond plant construction and are aimed at retrofitting existing technology pipelines and processes to make them better for the environment.
Heating and cooling systems in commercial and residential buildings that eliminate natural gas are one such area of focus. Technicians and construction workers who can help building owners secure federal rebates offered in the IRA are also in critically high demand.
“The Inflation Reduction Act has a huge part that focuses on heat pump systems,” Joan Baker, the political affairs director of the United Association Local 412 plumbers and pipefitters union in New Mexico, told The Hill.
“As far as heating, cooling and ventilation technicians go, we in New Mexico have been in a pinch for those particular trades,” Baker said.
Domestic manufacturing plays key foreign policy roleInitiatives to reshore U.S. manufacturing jobs in the wake of geopolitical tensions fanned by the coronavirus pandemic have been a key focus for senior Biden administration officials.
This has been especially true for the semiconductor industry, which experienced a major shortage following the pandemic. The semiconductor industry’s concentration in traditional East Asian manufacturing hubs like Taiwan helped to spur the passage of the CHIPS Act over concerns about the territorial ambitions of China, the U.S.’s main economic rival.
But even larger-scale trends in the international economy and growing dissatisfaction with global trade may be providing tailwinds to the U.S. construction manufacturing bonanza.
A speech in April by national security adviser Jake Sullivan revisited the theme of “industrial policy” — a term that went out of fashion in the 1990s as free trade agreements starting with NAFTA and culminating in the World Trade Organization (WTO) stepped into the limelight.
"We are not walking away from the WTO, but the WTO needs fundamental reform to account for … the presence of this massive non-market economy that just has a different structure to it,” Sullivan said, referring to China. “We can’t wait for WTO reform. We have to be pursuing a range of other strategies to deal with the fact of China as it is.”
https://thehill.com/business/4045941-how-bidens-big-investments-spurred-a-factory-boom/
