South America’s automotive powerhouse, Brazil paints its own picture. Plus: candid observations on how expansion by Chinese automotive companies is viewed in the EU and the USA.
Alexis Elmore reports on Mexico-based Electrolit’s establishment of its first U.S. operations; a Lonza expansion in Lisp, Switzerland; and the arrival of a new Nokia manufacturing facility in Uttar Pradesh, India.
Downtown Mobile and industrial operations at the Port of Mobile have coexisted for generations, but shipbreaking may be a dealbreaker. 2023 photo by Art Wager: Getty Images
Two weeks ago NorthStar and Modern American Recycling Services announced they have formed a team to pursue dismantlement of decommissioned U.S. Navy nuclear aircraft carriers at the Port of Mobile. This prompted the Mobile Chamber Board of Directors to issue a statement last week opposing the project, stating that bringing such activity to Mobile’s downtown waterfront risks undermining a number of business attraction, tourism and quality of life improvements and “creating a public perception issue, which could harm our city’s reputation as a vibrant, growing community. We believe this particular operation is incompatible with our vision for a dynamic and sustainable downtown.”
Even non-nuclear shipbreaking is a messy but moneymaking affair. The late Jack Lyne wrote about shipbreaking and interviewed the founder of International Shipbreaking Ltd. in this January 2007 report. Watch for more on this unfolding development and other Alabama news in the Alabama Spotlight to be published in the January 2025 issue of Site Selection.
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis on Friday released new statistics on employment by majority-owned U.S. affiliates of foreign multinational enterprises, which employed 8.35 million workers in the United States in 2022, a 6.8% increase from 7.82 million workers in 2021. Majority-owned U.S. affiliates with ultimate owners in the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada were the largest contributors to employment, the BEA said. Current-dollar value added of majority-owned U.S. affiliates increased 16.1% to $1.35 trillion in 2022, accounting for 6.7% of total U.S. business-sector value added. Expenditures for property, plant and equipment by majority-owned U.S. affiliates increased 3.8% to $299.1 billion (accounting for 15.7% of total U.S. private business capital expenditures) while R&D increased 3.5% to $80.3 billion, accounting for 11.6% of total U.S. business R&D.
The map above shows the top states by employment. “Majority-owned U.S. affiliate employment was highest in California (852,300), Texas (695,600) and New York (546,500),” the BEA stated. “In all three states, majority-owned U.S. affiliates in the manufacturing sector employed the most workers.”
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Photo courtesy of TSMC and NIST
One state sure to see its FDI employment numbers skyrocket from those 2022 levels is Arizona. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company on Friday was awarded the promised support of up to $6.6 billion in direct funding under the U.S. Department of Commerce’s CHIPS Incentives Program’s Funding Opportunity for Commercial Fabrication Facilities, pursuant to the MOU signed last April and completion of Commerce Department due diligence. The award supports planned investment of more than $65 billion in three greenfield fabs in Greater Phoenix, where the company anticipates creating 6,000 new direct jobs, 20,000 construction jobs and tens of thousands of indirect jobs.
It is the largest foreign direct investment in a greenfield project in the history of the United States, President Joe Biden said on Friday, noting that the CHIPS Act is “catalyzing nearly $450 billion in private investment in semiconductors, creating over 125,000 new construction and manufacturing jobs, and reshoring critical technologies to bolster our national and economic security.” TSMC Arizona is “on track to begin high-volume production in the first fab by the first half of 2025, with production beginning in the second fab in 2028 and in the third by the end of the decade,” according to a fact sheet at the Chips for America website of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
