President-elect Donald Trump, who will return to the White House this month, announced that Hussain Sajwani, the Emirati billionaire businessman who founded the property development giant DAMAC Properties, will invest $20 billion in building data centers across the United States.
Last Tuesday, January 7, Mr. Trump, during a press conference at his home in Mar-a-Lago, said that as part of the first stage of the implementation of the mentioned intention to make financial injections, attention would be paid to data centers in Indiana, Louisiana, Illinois, Oklahoma, Arizona, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas. It is also known that the specified functional objects will primarily support artificial intelligence and cloud technologies.
Hussain Sajwani said that the expectation of an opportunity to increase investment in the United States has been going on for years. Also in this context, the possibility of the growth of financial injections in the US from the originally planned $20 billion to a larger amount was separately noted.
No statement was made during the press conference regarding the details of the investment plan focused on financing the data center building in the United States.
According to media reports, large-scale intentions may eventually turn out to be formal statements with no practical result. There was also an outlined possibility that the plan would be implemented on a limited scale, significantly different from the original goals. In the context of the corresponding strictly hypothetical assumption, it is noted that the relevant experience already exists. In 2017, during his first term as president, Donald Trump and Wisconsin-then Governor Scott Walker announced that Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn would spend $10 billion for a campus near Milwaukee. A few months after this statement of intent the mentioned company began scaling back its plans. Wisconsin Public Radio reported that as of the end of 2022, Foxconn had created only about 1,000 jobs in the region instead of the promised 13,000 and had invested $1 billion as of the beginning of 2023, significantly less than the initially announced amount.
It is worth noting that Donald Trump negatively perceived the Chips Act, which focused on boosting research and semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. In this case, specific economic measures were implied in the form of direct government financing, subsidies, and investment tax credits. Many experts call the Chips Act one of the main achievements of the administration of the current President of the United States Joe Biden. As part of the Act, it is envisaged to set aside $39 billion in grants, 25% tax credits, and billions more in loans to restore US semiconductor manufacturing after decades of shifting production capacity to Asia, which has formed Washington’s dependence on foreign shipments.
It is also worth noting that Donald Trump and other Republicans, including Mike Johnson, who was re-elected Speaker of the House of Representatives last week, have threatened to repeal the Chips Act. In October, in an interview with Joe Rogan, Mr. Trump accused Taiwan of stealing the US chip business and called for tariffs on semiconductor imports.
As we have reported earlier, US Finalizes $458 Million Award to SK Hynix.
