Corporate Welfare Aside, the Biden-Harris Economy and Intel’s Clearly Over-Aggressive Plans Increase Odds Ohioans Will Be Left Holding An Empty Bag

Their epic failure when it comes to private sector job growth should and must have consequences or the word accountability will be utterly devoid of meaning.

To much fanfare, in January 2022, Intel announced its $100 billion plans to reverse its decades long decline by building massive semiconductor fabrication plants in Arizona, Ohio, and Germany. To even more fanfare, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris later announced the massive printing of money adding tens of billions of dollars to the national debt and supercharging inflation that is crushing Main Street Americans via the CHIPS Act that bestowed billions of corporate welfare on Intel (and other tech companies). At the time of Intel’s announcement, it was a company in crisis that was bleeding cash and marketshare. Just days before the big announcement, Intel’s share price stood at $52.04. 

Fast forward two-and-a-half years, Intel’s share price now stands at a paltry $21.48, or 58.7% LESS THAN its January 2022 level and nearly 2.5 times BELOW the 2022 share price. Wall Street clearly does not think much of CEO Pat Gelsinger’s recovery plan, so it is a matter of time before activist shareholders demand a course change. This substantial drop in share price comes after Intel announced large layoffs, a suspension of its dividend, and continued loss of cash and marketshare—but no curtailment of its core plans. Based on the drop, Intel’s market value now sits at “a level last seen 15 years ago” in 2009. In the nine quarters covering the period of time since Intel’s big move, it has lost money in five of the nine quarters, with the latest quarterly loss being its second largest two-and-a-half years into Gelsinger’s recovery plan. Few analysts see things turning around anytime soon.

In Intel’s defense, it launched its big plans one year into the Biden-Harris presidency, which has seen an economy riddled with skyrocketing inflation, weak and declining private sector job growth, massive illegal immigration, and a global environment with a level of instability last seen after the 9/11 terrorist attack. The best job growth occurring during the Biden-Harris presidency came as a a result of the recovery from the COVID pandemic started under Donald Trump that Biden-Harris inherited. The longer the Biden-Harris policies have been in place, the weaker the private sector has gotten. The latest monthly total from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics came in at an anemic 97,000 jobs (17,000 jobs were government jobs that only swallow tax dollars and provide no economic growth). We will get Ohio’s latest job figures in a couple of weeks. Those numbers won’t be pretty.

Intel’s Ohio project is already being delayed by at least two years. The costs of it, however, are already being pushed onto Ohioans. Ohioans have had to bear the costs to build roads, extend sewer and water lines, and other infrastructure costs. Last week, Ohioans learned that they will bear the majority of the $95 million costs for AEP to build the electrical infrastructure needed by Intel. Many of these Ohioans live nowhere near the Intel project so will bear the cost burden without any tangible benefit. Should the Intel plant actually open, wait until the water costs to keep the facility supercooled are pushed onto the water bills of Ohioans.

As is the case on many other core issues, I have served as the lone voice warning Ohioans about the likely implosion of the Intel project. I have raised concerns with JobsOhio’s long track record of getting the big projects horribly wrong (see the cracker plant in Belmont County that never came or the Peloton plant south of Toledo that didn’t make a single bike). I questioned the $2 billion in state and local corporate welfare bestowed on Intel by Mike DeWine and Jon Husted. Most importantly, I preached about the importance of enacting key policies like right-to-work, eliminating the state income tax, putting deregulation on steroids, streamlining local governments to reduce local taxes, and building a world-class airport that would make Ohio more competitive and more attractive to businesses instead of allowing the dimwits at JobsOhio and career politicians like DeWine and Husted who have ZERO private sector experience to pick winners and losers with taxpayer money (i.e., they are literally gambling with tax dollars).

I truly hope I am wrong about the demise of Intel’s Ohio project, but the writing of its demise is on the wall and getting written with permanent ink more every quarter. Should I be proven right, however, Ohioans will again be left holding an enormous empty bag full of job promises that never materialized, infrastructure costs that will never be recovered, and an economic transformation that proved to be little more than political hot air from desperate and cowardly men. If I am proven right, DeWine and Husted should be hounded nonstop for the remainder of their term, Biden and Harris should be kicked out of office in November, JobsOhio should be eliminated immediately, the Ohio General Assembly must get its act together, and Husted should cease his plans to run for governor in 2026 and never, ever darken the doorstep of Ohio politics again. Their epic failures when it comes to private sector job growth should and must have consequences or the word accountability will be utterly devoid of meaning. Netting just 82,100 private sector jobs in 5.5 years is beyond abysmal. Honorable men would resign in disgrace over that devastating record, but few politicians these days possess even a scintilla of honor.

P.S. I am glad to report that several state attorney generals heeded my call last week to launch investigations of ActBlue and its money laundering operations. Sadly, Ohio AG Dave Yost is not on that list. C’mon, Dave, after November it will be too late.