Remarks by President Trump and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich on U.S. Jobs

Oval Office  

12:52 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT:  You’ve never seen so much paper on a President’s desk.  (Laughter.)  That’s because we’re negotiating lots of deals for our country, which will be tremendous.  

And I just want to introduce Brian Krzanich, who’s the CEO of Intel, a great, great company.  And Brian called a few weeks ago and said, we want to do a very big announcement having to do with our country, but also having to do mostly with Arizona, and the jobs and the great technology that will be produced.

So this is Brian.  And, Brian, why don’t you say a few words and maybe also talk about the product you’re going to be making.  It’s amazing.

MR. KRZANICH:  Yes.  Thank you, Mr. President, for this.  It’s an honor to be here today representing Intel and to be able to announce our $7 billion investment in our newest, most advanced factory — Fab 42 in Chandler, Arizona.  We’ll be completing that factory to make the most advanced 7-nanometer semiconductor chips on the planet.

Intel is very proud of the fact that the majority of our manufacturing is here in the U.S. and the majority of our research and development is here in the U.S., while over 80 percent of what we sell is sold outside of the U.S.  And we’re consistently one of the top five exporters in the country and one of the top two research and development spenders in the United States.  And we’ve been able to do that even while the regulatory and tax policies have disadvantaged us in the past relative to the competition we have across the world.  

And Fab 42 is an investment in Intel, but also the U.S.’s future in innovation and leadership in the semiconductor industry.  Fab 42 will employ approximately 3,000 direct high-paying, high-wage, high-tech jobs at its peak, and over 10,000 people in the Arizona area in support of the factory.  And this factory will produce, as I said, the most powerful computer chips on the planet, powering the best computers, the best data centers, autonomous cars.  All of these devices are the most powerful computing devices on the planet.

And at Intel we have a simple saying that says, while other people predict the future, we build the future.  And this factory is a great example of that.

I want to thank the President for this opportunity to be here today.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Brian.  And you have something over there.  Show a little bit about the new product.

MR. KRZANICH:  This is an example of the wafer that will be built in Fab 42.  This is one of our newest 10-nanometer silicon wafers.  Seven-nanometers will be built in Fab 42.  And this is the future of computing.

THE PRESIDENT:  That’s great, thanks.  Do you have any questions for Brian?  I know you have none for me, so how about — (laughter) —   

Q    Are you going to bring back jobs?  The other business you have outside the country, do you plan on bringing them back here?

MR. KRZANICH:  This is actually expansion.  This is about growth.  So this position is actually about growth and new jobs in the U.S. 

THE PRESIDENT:  Great thing for Arizona.  Unbelievable company and product, and we’re very happy.  And I can tell you the people of Arizona are very happy.  It’s a lot of jobs.  Probably the investment — what are you saying, your total investment will be what?

MR. KRZANICH:  Total investment in just this factory is $7 billion.  But if you take Arizona, we already have two other factories in Arizona.  So we have several tens of billions of dollars of investments in factories in Arizona.  We’re the number-one private employer in Arizona.

Q    And how long have you been planning this investment?

MR. KRZANICH:  We’ve been working on this factory for several years.  We held off actually doing this investment until now.

Q    Was there something that President Trump did or said that made you want to announce this here and now?

MR. KRZANICH:  It’s really in support of the tax and regulatory policies that we see the administration pushing forward that really make it advantageous to do manufacturing in the U.S. 

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, all.  

END 
12:56 P.M. EST