The shortage of computer chips has zapped energy from the global economy, punishing industries as varied as automakers and medical device manufacturers and contributing to fears about high inflation.
Many states and cities in America are starting to see a silver lining in the fact that chip production in the United States may lead to a busy chip factory in their backyard. They are trying to get a piece of the boom.
Taylor is a Texas city of about 17,000 that is 40 minutes northeast of Austin. The leaders here are doing everything they can to get a $17 billion plant built by the company in the United States.
The city, its school district and the county will offer hundreds of millions of dollars in financial incentives to SAMSUNG. The community has arranged for water to be piped in from another county to be used at the plant.
Taylor is not the only one. In upstate New York, officials are trying to get in touch with the company. The politicians in the county that is home to Austin are also related to the plant. In a filing, the company said that locations in all three states offered robust property tax abatement and funds to build out infrastructure for the plant. Congress is considering subsidizing chip makers that build in the United States.
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Taylor is northeast of Austin. The New York Times has a credit for Eli Durst.
Where the plant will land is a mystery. The company says it's not sure where to put it. Any day, a decision is expected to be announced.
The federal government has urged companies like the one of the world's largest makers of high-tech components to build new plants in the United States. Intel broke ground on two plants in Arizona in September and could announce the location of a manufacturing campus by the end of the year.
This could be a warm-up act. The Senate passed a bill to give chip makers subsidies of over $50 billion this year, a plan supported by the Biden administration that would be Washington's biggest investment in industrial policy in decades. The House has not yet considered it. Nine governors wrote a letter to congressional leaders saying that the funding would provide a new, powerful tool in their states' economic development toolboxes.
Hope is being generated by the possibility of the arrival of SAMSUNG. Business owners say it would bring more people to the area. The parents think the high school students would like the assembly line. One real estate agent said that land values have risen in recent months just on the possibility of a rapid rise in land prices.
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The Texas Beer Company is a brewery.
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Ian Davis and J.D. Gins were the co-owners of Texas Beer. Five years ago, the company opened a taproom in downtown Taylor.
Ian Davis is the chief executive of Texas Beer Company, which opened a taproom in downtown Taylor five years ago.
The majority of the industry's revenue was generated in Taiwan, South Korea and mainland China. The United States controls less than 12 percent of global production.
The nation's economy is in a precarious position because of America's limited role in the industry. Politicians fear that China is taking steps to increase its control of global chip supplies, potentially leaving the United States at a technological disadvantage against a rival that would have national security implications.
The cities are trying to lure plants to their area, but they are raising questions about how far communities should go to get a piece of the high-tech economy.
Up to $30 million in water and road improvements were approved by the city of Chandler to support an Intel plant. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, a major chip maker, will spend $200 million on infrastructure for a new factory. The company said that subsidies were crucial to its plans when it announced the plant in 2020.
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The building is in Taylor. The city's downtown has lost some of its charm in recent decades.
Critics of corporate tax incentives say the money could be better spent on basic infrastructure. Factors like the availability of talent and natural resources are more important to chip makers than subsidies. They argue that cities sacrifice tax revenue for a big industrial project.
Nathan Jensen is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies subsidy programs. The problem is if you give away a lot of the benefits to get the company.
Many residents in Taylor said that it was necessary for the city to be revived.
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The New York Times has a story about the opening of the barbecue restaurant, called "Louie Muller Barbecue."
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The pitmaster at the barbecue is a third-generation owner.
Taylor was once a hub for shipping cotton and cattle. The barbecue was opened in 1949 and still has a good selection of ribs.
Residents said that Taylor's downtown has lost some of it's energy in recent decades.
They have tried to change that by attracting newer small businesses to the city and by converting an old building into a coffee shop that serves babka and chocolate-tahini brownies. The old high school in the town was used to house small businesses. The city made the park look better.
Susan Green, a Taylor resident who has children in the Taylor school system, said that bringing that in will bring enormous revenue to the city.
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Taylor was once a hub for shipping cotton and cattle.
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The possibility of a new company coming to Taylor is generating hope.
Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, said that the city's growth has been aided by the subsidies it received from the SAMSUNG company in the 1990s. Facebook and Apple have large operations in Austin, which is where the corporate headquarters of both companies have recently moved. By one estimate, the city is the top site for commercial real estate investment.
Austin and its surrounding county have held their own talks with the company. Mr. Adler wanted the city to be a good location for the plant.
Mr. Adler said that having them here paid a huge benefit. Pat Garofalo is the director of state and local policy for the American Economic Liberties Project, a liberal group that is critical of large tech companies, and he said the money would be better spent on projects that made a city attractive to a wide variety of businesses.
He said that the manufacturers are exploiting the shortage of chips by exploiting the tendency of state and local officials to pay a lot of taxpayer money for hosting one of these facilities.
Residents of her district were worried about corner stores being replaced by expensive grocery stores and being pushed out of their homes. She said that the city had the upper hand in dealing with tech companies and should make sure that any deal it cut did enough for existing residents.
She said that if it isn't good enough, then we don't need to do it. There is too much at risk of what could happen with this type of growth.
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The city of Austin has the upper hand in making deals with tech companies, according to a member of the council. She said that if it wasn't good enough, we don't need to do it.
If they get the project, the boosters believe they can manage those concerns.
It will be more traffic. Mr. Davis said there will be rising property values. I think it will help create jobs.
Mr. Davis made another offer to the chip maker at a public meeting: he would make a pale beer.
He said that having 5,000 daily construction workers patronizing all the small businesses would outweigh the cons by a mile.
