White House Says Biden-Moon Meeting Bolstered Samsung Deal
White House Says Biden-Moon Meeting Bolstered Samsung Deal
(Bloomberg) -- Top White House officials say that President Joe Biden’s meeting with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea in May helped clear the way for Samsung Electronics Co.’s announcement that it will build a semiconductor plant in Texas.
The deal was “the result of sustained work by the administration, including engagement with Samsung” and Biden’s encounter with Moon “where the two leaders announced they would facilitate mutual and complementary investments in semiconductors,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Brian Deese, the National Economic Council director, said in a joint statement Tuesday night.
They did not elaborate on what roles Biden and Moon played in bringing about Samsung’s decision.
The company will build the chip plant in Taylor, Texas, about 30 miles from Austin, where it has invested billions in a sprawling complex that already houses more than 3,000 employees and fabricates some of the country’s most sophisticated chips. Construction is scheduled to begin in the first half of 2022, and the plant is to begin production in the second half of 2024.
Samsung, Korea’s largest company, said it plans to invest $17 billion in the project. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a conservative Republican, held a press conference earlier Tuesday to praise the deal, saying it would create more than 2,000 jobs.
“The implications of this facility extend far beyond the boundaries of Texas,” Abbott said. “It’s going to impact the entire world.”
And Taylor’s mayor, Brandt Rydell, called the project “the single most significant and consequential development for the local economy since the International & Great Northern Railroad laid tracks here in the 1870s.”
Although the Samsung agreement is part of the Biden administration’s broader effort to counter China’s growing economic clout, it unfolded as the automobile and other industries continue to languish because of a global chip shortage.
At the same time, a bill that would provide $52 billion in incentives and grants to foster semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. remains frozen in Congress. Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said Tuesday that Samsung could receive $3 billion in incentives from the bill, known as the CHIPS Act, if it passes.
Deese and Sullivan said in the statement that “the Biden-Harris administration has been working around the clock with Congress, our allies and partners, and the private sector to generate additional semiconductor manufacturing capacity and make sure we never again face shortages.”
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.