Ohio’s Rustbelt Turns Into A Magnet For Chip Fabs

By Lauren Fedor
Financial Times

In Licking County, Ohio, massive red cranes dot the landscape and orange traffic signs warn motorists that trucks are entering the highway.

It is here, about 25km north-east of the state capital, Columbus, that Intel, the semiconductor giant, is building two new chip factories. The $20bn investment has been touted by local government officials as the single biggest economic development project in the history of Ohio.

The mega-site, spanning some 1,000 acres of predominantly former farmland, could accommodate eight chip factories, or fabs, with a total investment of as much as $100bn over the next decade. That would make it one of the largest semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the world.

But, for now, the initial phase of the construction project, which is slated to be completed at the end of 2025, has become emblematic of the economic development that has supercharged growth in this corner of the country. Once considered part of America’s rustbelt, it is now known among enthusiastic investors as “Silicon Heartland”.

It is also a hallmark of the White House’s industrial strategy to incentivise high-tech manufacturing in the US, and a clear example of both the opportunities and challenges posed by such large-scale investments. Read More

Can the US Lead on Clean Aluminum?


Can the US lead on clean aluminum? Ford, GM and others hope so
A group of 14 major aluminum buyers wants the U.S. to invest in low-carbon production of the metal, which is vital for EVs, solar panels and many other products.

By Alison F. Takemura

Canary Media
5 October 2023

Ford, General Motors, Rivian and SunPower are among a group of companies calling on the Biden administration to make the U.S. a powerhouse producer of clean aluminum, a metal crucial to the energy transition.

A total of 14 aluminum buyers, from electric-vehicle manufacturers to solar-panel producers (and even some alcoholic-beverage makers), issued a first-of-a-kind letter to U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm last week, urging her agency to use funds from the Inflation Reduction Act to spur a domestic supply of low- to zero-carbon aluminum.  Read more

Reshoring and Automation: Where Do Cobots Fit in?

A look at how smaller manufacturers are using the technology to grow their businesses.
By Bryan Bird
Industry Week
For North American businesses of all types, especially those in the manufacturing sector, 2022 was anything but typical. Or boring. Or easy. “Labor shortages” and “supply chain issues” became go-to phrases that encapsulated the most significant challenges for industry, continuing well into 2023.

The good news? Supply chain issues are improving monthly, and inflation has dropped by more than 50% from its peak. Additionally, reshoring initiatives are gaining ground around North America as businesses and policy makers at the state and federal levels recognize the importance of having a strong domestic manufacturing sector.

In fact, 62% of manufacturers surveyed in a Deloitte poll in November 2022 had already started reshoring or nearshoring their production capacities.  Read more

Cities Urged To Step Up Climate Workforce Planning

By Sarah Wray

Cities Today

As cities create and implement climate action plans, new research highlights the need for more focus on green workforce planning.

The Brookings Institution think tank assessed the climate action plans of 50 large US cities.

The research finds that many cities are “not in a position to harness new funding” such as from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act, and that they have “more workforce planning to do”. The report comes amid an existing shortage of infrastructure workers in some areas.

Most of the cities analysed – 47 of 50 – mention green jobs in their climate action plans, but they only tend to do so “in passing”. The report says that while some cities do not refer to green jobs at all in their plans, most only include a more general call for equity and greater opportunities.

Forty of the cities emphasise energy projects when discussing workforce needs, but considerably fewer cities call out requirements in terms of buildings, transportation, or other parts of the built environment. About half of the cities (24) emphasise workforce needs around building upgrades and retrofits, and 20 highlight these needs around transportation improvements. Read More

A Global Green New Deal Is the Best Way to Save the Planet

What is urgently needed is a political platform that embraces a sound climate stabilization plan which ensures a just transition, creates a plethora of new jobs, reduces inequality, and promotes sustainable growth.
By C.J. POLYCHRONIOU
Common Dreams

Jul 30, 2023 – Another summer is upon us and heatwaves are scorching many parts of the world, smashing thousands of temperature records. Even the world’s ocean surface temperature is off the charts, reaching unprecedented levels, while sea ice level in the Antarctic has set a record low for the second year in a row.

Indeed, planet earth is screaming because “ climate change is out of control,” as U.N. General-Secretary António Guterres recently put it. Yet the global community’s response to the greatest existential threat facing humanity continues to be not merely unacceptably slow but borders on criminal negligence.

We know the reasons why. Read More

China’s Hidden Tech Revolution

How Beijing Threatens U.S. Dominance
By Dan Wang

Foreign Affairs
March/April 2023

In 2007, the year Apple first started making iPhones in China, the country was better known for cheap labor than for technological sophistication. At the time, Chinese firms were unable to produce almost any of the iPhone’s internal components, which were imported from Germany, Japan, and the United States. China’s overall contribution to the devices was limited to the labor of assembling these components at Foxconn’s factories in Shenzhen—what amounted to less than four percent of the value-added costs.

By the time the iPhone X was released, in 2018, the situation had dramatically changed. Not only were Chinese workers continuing to assemble most iPhones, but Chinese firms were producing many of the sophisticated components inside them, including acoustic parts, charging modules, and battery packs. Having mastered complex technologies, these firms could produce better products than their Asian and European competitors. With the latest generation of iPhones, this pattern has only accelerated. Today, Chinese tech firms account for more than 25 percent of the device’s value-added costs.

Although the iPhone is a special case—as one of the most intricate pieces of hardware in existence, it relies on an exceptional range of technologies—its expanding footprint in China captures a broader trend. In a majority of manufactured goods, Chinese firms have moved beyond assembling foreign-made components to producing their own cutting-edge technologies. Along with its dominance of renewable power equipment, China is now at the forefront of emerging technologies Read More

Biden’s industrial policy is missing a key ingredient: Allies

Photo: President Biden speaks at the North America’s Building Trades Unions National Legislative Conference in Washington on April 25. (Andrew Harnik/AP, File)

By the Washington Post

June 19, 2023  – The era of unfettered free trade is over. There’s bipartisan sentiment in Washington to build what national security adviser Jake Sullivan has called a “new consensus” around “a modern industrial and innovation strategy.” It’s echoed in Beijing and other foreign capitals that are aggressively pursuing protectionist policies. What comes next is still in the incubation phase. Yes, the Biden administration has enacted sweeping subsidies to boost production of semiconductors, batteries and green energy at home. There are already signs of a U.S. manufacturing resurgence. Industrial policy is clearly back, but how it gets implemented will set a precedent on the global stage. Is this new era one of decoupling or a growing trade practice known as “friend-shoring”?

Top Biden administration officials insist it’s not decoupling, which would be a broad retreat from trade. We agree that would be a mistake. A better approach is to deepen trade ties with our allies and like-minded nations, a strategy that might be called maximal friend-shoring.

Interview with Mondragon CEO Josu Ugarte

By Grassroots Economic Organizing

https://geo.coop

Sky-high corporate CEO pay, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz notes in a new report, “creates social norms” that drive up levels of inequality far beyond corporate payrolls.

Those “social norms,” cheerleaders for our current corporate order insist, simply reflect economic reality. In a globalized world where corporations tally sales and profits in the many billions, their argument goes, no modern major business could possibly survive — let alone thrive — without shelling out top executive pay that stretches into the many millions.

The owners of one of the largest businesses in Spain would beg to disagree.

Their nearly 60-year-old enterprise — named Mondragon for the Basque town in northern Spain that gave it birth — has nearly 75,000 employees working in everything from heavy industry and retail to banking and education. A big-league business, in other words, by any metric.

Yet Mondragon doesn’t shell out millions to any of its top executives. No executive at Mondragon makes anything close to even a single million.

How could that be? Mondragon just happens to operate as a cooperative and may be, many analysts believe, the world’s most significant worker-owned business.

Josu Ugarte, the president of Mondragon International, spent a chunk of last month touring the United States, as part of the co-op’s ongoing outreach to people and groups looking for alternatives to corporate business as usual. What alternative for corporate compensation does Mondragon offer? Too Much editor Sam Pizzigati caught up with Ugarte in Washington, D.C. and explored that question with him.

Sky-high corporate CEO pay, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz notes in a new report, “creates social norms” that drive up levels of inequality far beyond corporate payrolls.

Those “social norms,” cheerleaders for our current corporate order insist, simply reflect economic reality. In a globalized world where corporations tally sales and profits in the many billions, their argument goes, no modern major business could possibly survive — let alone thrive — without shelling out top executive pay that stretches into the many millions.

The owners of one of the largest businesses in Spain would beg to disagree.

Their nearly 60-year-old enterprise — named Mondragon for the Basque town in northern Spain that gave it birth — has nearly 75,000 employees working in everything from heavy industry and retail to banking and education. A big-league business, in other words, by any metric.

Yet Mondragon doesn’t shell out millions to any of its top executives. No executive at Mondragon makes anything close to even a single million.

How could that be? Mondragon just happens to operate as a cooperative and may be, many analysts believe, the world’s most significant worker-owned business. Read More

 

 

 

The Trip to Mondragon: Home of the World’s Largest Co-op

By KAREEM A. SIMPSON
Soaxbox Cincinnati
MAY 23, 2023 – The delegation from Cincinnati and Dayton came back with clear next steps on how they want to bring work-ownership to the next level in southwest Ohio.

Founded in 2011, Co-op Cincy is a local, Greater Cincinnati organization whose mission is to “nurture a resilient, interconnected network of worker-owned businesses in Greater Cincinnati.” Since their incorporation, the organization has loaned more than $1 million to co-op businesses and employees. In addition, the organization has trained over 1,300 individuals about worker ownership. Currently there are a total of sixteen businesses in their cooperative network.

What has inspired their mission throughout the years is the Mondragon Corporation, an association of cooperatives that has transformed the Basque region of Spain by reducing inequality and poverty. Going strong since 1956, Mondragon’s network of cooperatives has been an engine for economic growth in Spain’s Basque region’s lowest levels of poverty providing a path for economic equality.

In 2022, in an article published by the New Yorker Magazine, the Mondragon Corporation was quoted as being “the world’s largest co-op”.

Today Mondragon Corporation employs 70,000 people in an association of eighty cooperatives, which range from a grocery chain to engineering and logistics firms. It’s the tenth largest corporation in Spain, with sales in 150 countries.

Just last month, Co-op Cincy was able to tour the association in Spain with a diverse delegation that included business, philanthropic, and faith leaders plus worker-owners from Co-op Cincy’s network of cooperatives; and representatives from Co-op Cincy’s sister organization in Dayton, Co-op Dayton.

New Steel Mill To Be Constructed In Aliquippa

By Lauren Linder
CBS News via Beaver County Blue

ALIQUIPPA, Pa. (KDKA) – A major economic boost appears to be heading to Aliquippa, as a Brooklyn company is planning to build a new steel mill in Beaver County.

The official groundbreaking is Tuesday, which will mark a special moment for the city that was originally built around steel.

Aliquippa Mayor Dwan Walker never thought he would live to see a day when the steel industry returned to the city, but it’s happening in the same spot off Woodlawn Road, where his dad spent 18 years working for J & L in the 1970s and 1980s.

“To have a comeback to where it gave birth to, it’s a beautiful thing,” Walker said. “To hear my dad almost cry about it, that says more to me than any words that I could say.”

The land remained vacant for decades since the J & L and LTV mills closed. Now a Brooklyn, New York company is coming in, 72 Steel, started by Chinese-American entrepreneurs.

New steel mill coming to Aliquippa 01:35
72 Steel Senior Business Advisor Xiaoyan Zhang said they chose Aliquippa for the $218 million facility over sites in Ohio and West Virginia. They will produce rebar at the 44-acre mill and hire 300 to 800 workers for construction, distribution, and the plant.

“We know that history, and so to build a steel mill here is exciting,” Zhang said. “Because this is an old industrial base, there will be a lot of talent, you know, that’s for hiring people and everything else.”

Property owner Chuck Betters was waiting for the right business to move in. In recent years the space was used as a staging area for the Shell cracker plant in Monaca. Then, a couple of years ago, he showed the land to 72 Steel, and eventually, they agreed.

“It’s what I’ve been hoping for,” Betters said. “I think it could be a heck of a good job creation here, a tax base for the city. I think it would be good things.”

This is the hope for Mayor Walker.

“We planted a seed that’s going to last the test of time, and then this is this going to be a caveat,” Walker said.

It’s a full-circle moment as the city heads into the future.

“This is going to be the blessing, you know, to make sure we stay out of distressed and to make sure we’re bringing economics and financial stability back to Aliquippa on a solid ground, on solid footing,” Walker said.

No word on when construction will start but 72 Steel hopes to finish by mid-to-late 2025.

Betters said he sold the rest of the 80-something-acre old mill land to Versatex, which makes products like plastic decking, and U.S. Minerals, which makes abrasives.

New Steel Mill To Be Constructed In Aliquippa