By Josh Boak, Associated Press
(AP) President Joe Biden has been pushing for more U.S. factory jobs — and he’ll be joined Friday by the CEO of technology company Siemens USA to announce a $54 million investment in producing equipment for the electrical infrastructure.
The investment will lead to 300 additional jobs at locations that include California and Texas, according to senior Biden administration officials who insisted on anonymity to preview the event on the White House campus. Siemens USA CEO Barbara Humpton is among several manufacturing executives who’ve met with Biden in recent weeks to discuss their expansion plans.
The White House previously highlighted plans by Intel to open a $20 billion plant in Ohio and General Motors committing $7 billion to create 4,000 jobs for making electric vehicles in Michigan.
The U.S. has about 12.6 million manufacturing jobs, about 200,000 jobs shy of pre-coronavirus pandemic levels. Past presidents have pledged a factory boom, yet the economy had roughly 17.3 million manufacturing jobs toward the start of 2000 when outsourcing to China and other countries accelerated as employers sought to lower their costs.
With supply chains squeezed after the COVID-19 outbreak, Biden is arguing that the return of factory jobs to the U.S. will help eliminate knots in the supply chain and keep inflation low.
The Democratic president on Friday also will announce details on a final rule tied to his “Made in America” executive order from January of last year. The rule will require that companies providing goods to the federal government have 75% of their product content made domestically to qualify by 2029. That’s up from the prior level of 55%.
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