Siemens to boost domestic production by $54 million

Siemens USA announced at an event with President Biden on Friday that it is investing $54 million to expand production in the U.S.

The technology company’s investment will create 300 manufacturing jobs, making critical electrical infrastructure that supports electric vehicle chargers, data centers to industrial sites and other technology.

Barbara Humpton, president and CEO of Siemens USA, made the announcement alongside Biden on Friday and announced that this spring, Siemens will identify the location of a new EV charging manufacturing hub to produce over a million EV chargers over the next four years.

Siemens, which manufacturers electric parts such as circuit boards, will add the 300 jobs and other investments at facilities in California and Texas.

“When I ran and got elected, I said I wanted to rebuild America. This is what I was talking about and we want to see a lot more stories like this one,” Biden said at the event.

Friday’s event at the White House is part of Biden’s “Made in America” initiative. Biden argued earlier this week that a key action to combatting rising inflation in the U.S., which has taken a toll on his approval ratings, is making more goods in America.

Biden touted the February jobs report at the event on Friday, which showed the U.S. added 678,000 jobs and unemployment dropped to 3.8 percent.

“Americans are back to work,” Biden said. “Yes, family budgets are still tight but a lot of Americans are getting pay checks this year, more than they got last year and restoring the dignity of work so they can show up at work with some pride.”

He also called on Congress to pass the Bipartisan Innovation Act, also known as the China competition bill, which is aimed at bolstering domestic supply chains and scientific research to make the U.S. more competitive with nations such as China.

Biden said the economy created 423,000 new manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

Senior administration officials, ahead of the remarks, criticized former President Trump’s policies toward manufacturing.

“You may recall the previous administration made big claims on how they would restore America’s industrial might. That turned out to be just rhetoric. President Trump’s promises went nowhere. Our manufacturing continued to limp along and in the end—after his botched pandemic response—we ended up with 182,000 fewer manufacturing jobs by the end of his four years in office,” officials said. 

Biden also announced on Friday updates to the implementation of the Buy American Act, which officials described as the most robust updates to it in 70 years. The act was implemented to require federal agencies to procure domestic products.

The president announced a rule to raise the domestic content threshold to 75 percent in seven years. Products currently qualify as Made in America for federal procurement if 55 percent of the value of their component parts are manufactured in the U.S. and the rule will increase that to 60 percent on Oct. 25, 65 percent in 2024 and 75 percent in 2029.

“Right now, if you’re manufacturing a product that gets purchased by the federal government, the law says…substantially all of that product should be made in the United States. But, because of loop holes over time, you know what substantially all means when I took office? If 55 percent is made in America,” Biden said. “To me, 55 percent is not substantially all. Its slightly over half.”

Biden also announced a rule to allow the government to apply enhanced price preferences to select critical products and components, which aims to support the development and expansion of domestic supply chains for critical products by providing a source of stable demand for domestically-produced critical products. 

“It’s worth it for us to ensure that we have the domestic capacity to protect us from shortages and price spikes in the future,” Biden said.

Lonnie Stephenson, International President of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, joined the event on Friday to discuss Biden’s Made in America policies and their impact on higher-wage union jobs across the country. 

Other companies that recently teamed up with the White House to announce domestic manufacturing expansions include Intel, which announced a $20 billion semiconductor manufacturing plant in Ohio, and General Motors, which announced a $7 billion investment to create 4,000 new EV manufacturing jobs in Michigan.

Updated: 2:01 p.m.