logo
Whitmer says 'massive economic uncertainty' is to blame on semiconductor project failure in Michigan

Whitmer says 'massive economic uncertainty' is to blame on semiconductor project failure in Michigan

Independent16-07-2025
Plans to build a semiconductor manufacturing plant in Michigan have fallen through and Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Wednesday that 'massive economic uncertainty' is to blame.
Bringing the company to Michigan was a key goal for Whitmer, a Democrat and potential 2028 presidential candidate who is in her final years as governor of the battleground state.
Domestic manufacturing is a priority of President Donald Trump 's second administration and the president has leveraged tariffs as a way to incentivize companies to build and stay in America. While Whitmer did not mention Trump by name in her remarks, she pointed the finger at his tariffs that have shaken up the economy periodically this year.
'Their board came to this decision amid national economic turmoil, which is at risk of worsening amid threats of even higher tariffs,' Whitmer said in a statement.
Whitmer did not name the company but state records show California-based technology firm Sandisk Corp. was considering the sprawling 1,300-acre site near the city of Flint and forecasted 9,400 jobs and 5,000 construction jobs as a result.
Sandisk declined to comment on Wednesday.
The news quickly set off dueling political statements from Republicans and Democrats in the state.
The Trump administration is using tariffs and other tactics to bring manufacturing in critical areas like semiconductors back to the U.S., White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement in response to Whitmer's remarks.
Desai pointed to new semiconductor development in Texas and Arizona this year as wins garnered by the Trump administration in the chips and technology industry.
Other Democrats were quick to attribute the loss in Michigan to Trump's economic policies Wednesday.
'Trump's abandonment of long-term investments and chaotic tariff practices are not only raising costs, they just killed 10,000 good-paying jobs,' U.S. Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, a Democrat who represents the area, said in a statement. 'This could have been a game-changer for mid-Michigan's economy.'
Michigan House of Representatives Speaker Matt Hall, a Republican, said he supports Trump's strategy of relying on tariffs and incentives in the tax and spending bill to bring manufacturing development to America, not overseas.
'We simply need state leaders who are focused on making sure Michigan is the best possible place to build and grow,' he said.
Sandisk, known for making flash drives and memory cards, was looking to break ground on the project in 2025, according to documents provided by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.
Michigan offered Sandisk $1.925 billion in cash grants, $250 million in workforce development funding and about $3.76 billion in tax breaks, according to documents dated to August 2024.
Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act incentivizing technology development about halfway through former President Joe Biden 's term. Even as Trump and Republican lawmakers have since threatened to put an end to the act, the Department of Commerce was collaborating with Sandisk on securing federal incentives through the package.
Whitmer in her statement said that the company is no longer looking to build a semiconductor facility anywhere in the U.S. In a speech in May, Whitmer said she had been advocating with the Trump administration directly to help bring a chip plant to the state.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Immigration agents told a teenage US citizen: ‘You've got no rights.' He secretly recorded his brutal arrest
Immigration agents told a teenage US citizen: ‘You've got no rights.' He secretly recorded his brutal arrest

The Guardian

time23 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

Immigration agents told a teenage US citizen: ‘You've got no rights.' He secretly recorded his brutal arrest

On the morning of 2 May, teenager Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio was driving to his landscaping job in North Palm Beach with his mother and two male friends when they were pulled over by the Florida highway patrol. In one swift moment, a traffic stop turned into a violent arrest. A highway patrol officer asked everyone in the van to identify themselves, then called for backup. Officers with US border patrol arrived on the scene. Video footage of the incident captured by Laynez-Ambrosio, an 18-year-old US citizen, appears to show a group of officers in tactical gear working together to violently detain the three men*, two of whom are undocumented. They appear to use a stun gun on one man, put another in a chokehold and can be heard telling Laynez-Ambrosio: 'You've got no rights here. You're a migo, brother.' Afterward, agents can be heard bragging and making light of the arrests, calling the stun gun use 'funny' and quipping: 'You can smell that … $30,000 bonus.' The footage has put fresh scrutiny on the harsh tactics used by US law enforcement officials as the Trump administration sets ambitious enforcement targets to detain thousands of immigrants every day. 'The federal government has imposed quotas for the arrest of immigrants,' said Jack Scarola, an attorney who is advocating on behalf of Laynez-Ambrosio and working with the non-profit Guatemalan-Maya Center, which provided the footage to the Guardian. 'Any time law enforcement is compelled to work towards a quota, it poses a significant risk to other rights.' The incident unfolded at roughly 9am, when a highway patrol officer pulled over the company work van, driven by Laynez-Ambrosio's mother, and discovered that she had a suspended license. Laynez-Ambrosio said he is unsure why the van was pulled over, as his mother was driving below the speed limit. Laynez-Ambrosio hadn't intended to film the interaction – he already had his phone out to show his mom 'a silly TikTok', he said – but immediately clicked record when it became clear what was happening. The video begins after the van has been pulled over and the border patrol had arrived. A female officer can be heard asking, in Spanish, whether anyone is in the country illegally. One of Laynez-Ambrosio's friends answers that he is undocumented. 'That's when they said, 'OK, let's go,'' Laynez-Ambrosio recalled. Laynez-Ambrosio said things turned aggressive before the group even had a chance to exit the van. One of the officers 'put his hand inside the window', he said, 'popped the door open, grabbed my friend by the neck and had him in a chokehold'. Footage appears to show officers then reaching for Laynez-Ambrosio and his other friend as Laynez-Ambrosio can be heard protesting: 'You can't grab me like that.' Multiple officers can be seen pulling the other man from the van and telling him to 'put your fucking head down'. The footage captures the sound of a stun gun as Laynez-Ambrosio's friend cries out in pain and drops to the ground. Laynez-Ambrosio said that his friend was not resisting, and that he didn't speak English and didn't understand the officer's commands. 'My friend didn't do anything before they grabbed him,' he said. In the video, Laynez-Ambrosio can be heard repeatedly telling his friend, in Spanish, to not resist. 'I wasn't really worried about myself because I knew I was going to get out of the situation,' he said. 'But I was worried about him. I could speak up for him but not fight back, because I would've made the situation worse.' Laynez-Ambrosio can also be heard telling officers: 'I was born and raised right here.' Still, he was pushed to the ground and says that an officer aimed a stun gun at him. He was subsequently arrested and held in a cell at a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) station for six hours. Audio in the video catches the unidentified officers debriefing and appearing to make light of the stun gun use. 'You're funny, bro,' one officer can be overheard saying to another, followed by laughter. Another officer says, 'They're starting to resist more now,' to which an officer replies: 'We're going to end up shooting some of them.' Later in the footage, the officers move on to general celebration – 'Goddamn! Woo! Nice!' – and talk of the potential bonus they'll be getting: 'Just remember, you can smell that [inaudible] $30,000 bonus.' It is unclear what bonus they are referring to. Donald Trump's recent spending bill includes billions of additional dollars for Ice that could be spent on recruitment and retention tactics such as bonuses. Laynez-Ambrosio said his two friends were eventually transferred to the Krome detention center in Miami. He believes they were released on bail and are awaiting a court hearing, but said it has been difficult to stay in touch with them. Laynez-Ambrosio's notice to appear in court confirms that the border patrol arrived on the scene, having been called in by the highway patrol. His other legal representative, Victoria Mesa-Estrada, also confirmed that border patrol officers transported the three men to the border patrol facility. The Florida highway patrol, CBP, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to requests for comment before publication. Laynez-Ambrosio was charged with obstruction without violence and sentenced to 10 hours of community service and a four-hour anger management course. While in detention, he said, police threatened him with charges if he did not delete the video footage from his phone, but he refused. Scarola, his lawyer, said the charges were retaliation for filming the incident. 'Kenny was charged with filming [and was] alleged to have interfered with the activities of law enforcement,' he explained. 'But there was no intended interference – merely the exercise of a right to record what was happening.' In February, Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, signed an agreement between the state and the Department of Homeland Security allowing Florida highway patrol troopers to be trained and approved by Ice to arrest and detain immigrants. While such agreements have been inked across the US, Florida has the largest concentration of these deals. Father Frank O'Loughlin, founder and executive director of the Guatemalan-Maya Center, the advocates for Laynez-Ambrosio, says the incident has further eroded trust between Florida's immigrant community and the police. 'This is a story about the corruption of law enforcement by Maga and the brutality of state and federal troopers – formerly public servants – towards nonviolent people,' he said. Meanwhile, Laynez-Ambrosio is trying to recover from the ordeal, and hopes the footage raises awareness of how immigrants are being treated in the US. 'It didn't need to go down like that. If they knew that my people were undocumented, they could've just kindly taken them out of the car and arrested them,' he said. 'It hurt me bad to see my friends like that. Because they're just good people, trying to earn an honest living.' The Guardian is granting anonymity to Laynez-Ambrosio's mother and the men arrested in the footage to protect their privacy

Trump targets Ivy League colleges after $220M Columbia deal
Trump targets Ivy League colleges after $220M Columbia deal

The Herald Scotland

time23 minutes ago

  • The Herald Scotland

Trump targets Ivy League colleges after $220M Columbia deal

His administration's unprecedented deal with Columbia University in New York City has put many of its Ivy League peers in a tough spot. To shake the target off its back and unpause research funding, Columbia agreed on July 23 to pay fines of more than $220 million (and signed on to a sprawling list of other concessions related to admissions, academics and hiring practices). The accord has unnerved leaders at college campuses across the country. "This has opened up a Pandora's box," said Scott Schneider, an attorney and expert in higher education law. Read more: The details of Columbia's extraordinary $220 million deal with Trump, explained Trump, who has halted billions in research grants to a slew of schools, has said he envisions the Columbia deal as the first of many such agreements. His education secretary, Linda McMahon, called it a blueprint for other institutions to follow. Read more: After $220 million Columbia deal, Trump promises more to come "Columbia's reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public," she said in a statement. While it's unclear whether the agreement has set a new precedent, the Trump administration is pushing for other colleges to pay similar types of fines, a White House official confirmed to USA TODAY. Some onlookers, including Larry Summers, a former president of Harvard, have lauded the deal. He called it an "excellent template" for resolutions with the administration. But critics such as Brendan Cantwell, a higher education professor at Michigan State University, believe the short-term benefits of conceding to broad demands from the Trump administration are not worth the long-term implications of redefining the relationship between the federal government and higher education. Still, he understands the arguments of people like Summers. When colleges choose to fight, he acknowledged, "individual people are going to be hurt." "And maybe that's an unacceptable cost," he said. Trump's other deal: the University of Pennsylvania Columbia isn't the only Ivy League school to strike a deal with the Trump administration this summer. On July 1, the University of Pennsylvania, the president's alma mater in Philadelphia, entered into an agreement ending a civil rights investigation brought by the U.S. Department of Education. In February, the agency accused Penn of violating Title IX, the primary sex discrimination law governing schools, when it allowed Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer, to compete in 2022. By March, professors were told their research projects had lost funding. The school's president said $175 million in grants and programs had been jeopardized. As part of the deal, the White House said it would restore Penn's research funding. In return, the university apologized to cisgender athletes who swam against Thomas. The university also agreed to ban transgender women from sports. (Trans women athletes have been banned from competing on women's teams at National Collegiate Athletic Association schools since February, when new rules were imposed, although the NCAA's policy permits trans men to compete in men's sports.) Read more: Lia Thomas, Title IX and $175M -- why Penn struck a deal with Trump Weeks after the deal was announced, many Penn faculty members remain in limbo, unsure about which grants have been revived. "Nobody really knows what was cut and what was restored," said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor who studies the history of education at the university. "It feels like the theater of the absurd." Harvard keeps fighting Harvard, unlike the other Ivy League campuses immersed in similar conflicts, has continued to battle the Trump administration in court. At a key hearing in Boston on July 21, the university's lawyers urged a federal judge to force the White House to restore billions in funding for the school. Harvard has asked the judge to reach a decision by Sept. 3. But the White House's attacks on Harvard have extended far beyond money for research: The Trump administration has threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status, tried to ban its ability to enroll international students, warned its accreditor, and considered placing a lien on the university's assets. All the while, Trump has hinted he believes Harvard may still be open to coming to a deal. Other colleges in limbo Of the eight schools that make up the Ivy League, only two - Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Yale University in Connecticut - have avoided targeted federal funding freezes. At Cornell, the government paused more than $1 billion. At Brown, it froze $510 million, and at Princeton it stopped more than $210 million. Asked whether their university leaders were negotiating with the Trump administration to restore their funding, spokespeople for Brown, Cornell and Princeton declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. Additional agreements with those schools (and others) could happen before the start of the year, according to Robert Kelchen, a higher education professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Trump, plagued by heightened attention to the president's reported ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, may be looking for ways to change the narrative, Kelchen said. And some schools might feel incentivized to resolve funding problems before students - and protests - return to campus for the fall. "The whole Epstein thing really has the potential to swamp the administration," he said. "They want victories they can point to." Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@ Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @

TikTok ban: App goes dark if China doesn't agree to US deal
TikTok ban: App goes dark if China doesn't agree to US deal

The Herald Scotland

time23 minutes ago

  • The Herald Scotland

TikTok ban: App goes dark if China doesn't agree to US deal

"If that deal gets approved by the Chinese, then that deal will happen. If they don't approve it, then TikTok is going to go dark," Lutnick said. "And those decisions are coming very soon, so let's see what the Chinese do. They've got to approve it. The deal is over to them right now." When asked if the potential agreement is a part of current trade talks with China, Lutnick said it was being discussed, but "not officially." "You can't really go meet somebody and not bring up the topics that are open," Lutnick said during the interview. "It's not officially a part of it, but unofficially, of course, it's going to be discussed. Neither TikTok nor the White House immediately responded for comment when contacted by USA TODAY on July 24. TikTok: Trump signs executive order delaying ban on TikTok - again When could TikTok go dark in the US? The next deadline for TikTok to be sold from ByteDance is Sept. 17. Trump signed an executive order, the third of its kind, to extend the deadline in June. Why could TikTok get banned? TikTok's future in the United States has been up in the air for months. In January, the platform went dark for less than 24 hours under federal legislation signed into law by former President Joe Biden. For years, some government officials have been concerned that TikTok is a national security threat, believing that ByteDance, which is based in Beijing, is sharing U.S. user data with China. TikTok has repeatedly denied these claims. Three times now, Trump has signed executive orders that push back the deadline for when TikTok must be sold, promising that deals with China are on the horizon. The latest was in early July, when Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was hopeful Chinese President Xi would agree to a deal to see the platform to the U.S. Greta Cross is a national trending reporter at USA TODAY. Story idea? Email her at gcross@

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store