北卡罗来纳州锡勒市在乔·拜登总统承诺的经济繁荣的中心，一辆缓慢的拖拉机仍然可以停止交通。
只有81，000人生活在北卡罗来纳州查塔姆县的农村地区。共有1076个农场。旧磨坊现在是一个舞蹈室、一家杂货店和一家牛排店的所在地。为了工作，许多人别无选择，只能通勤到附近的教堂山、达勒姆和罗利。
但经过多年的精心规划，查塔姆县已经开始发生变化。
新的Wolfspeed工厂——六个足球场长——俯瞰I-64，很快将生产用于计算机芯片的先进晶圆。汽车制造商Vinfast也计划开设一家工厂。这两个项目在很大程度上源于拜登签署成为法律的激励措施。
包括华特·迪士尼公司在内的开发商计划建造数千套新房。
牛排店老板格雷格·刘易斯说:“当合适的机会出现时，我们已经准备好了。”“是成长，成长，成长。”
同样的经济故事正在其他一些关键的战场州重演，包括亚利桑那州和佐治亚州。
尽管刘易斯表达的热情通常意味着现任总统会顺风顺水，但到目前为止选举今年以来，几乎没有证据表明美国人对拜登的当选给予信任，因为选民们仍然关注年通胀率仍在攀升3.4%。
查塔姆县等地表明，今年的总统竞选为美国经济未来提供了两种相互冲突的愿景。
选民面临着一个决定未来几十年的选择:前总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)倾向于向企业和富人减税，或者拜登支持的有针对性的政府投资，以及可能增加税收为中产阶级项目提供资金。
该县在2020年支持拜登而不是特朗普，但位于共和党众议员理查德·哈德森的坚定国会选区。他投票反对民主党总统的政策，他的办公室拒绝回答在他的选区投资是否有利的问题。
联邦和私营部门资金的流入会在多大程度上影响北卡罗来纳州及其他地区的政治动态，这将对谁将赢得11月的总统选举有很大影响。
拜登正在宣传他的政策如何帮助私人和联邦投资向企业注入数千亿美元，帮助重振衰落的计算机芯片行业，并开创电动汽车、太阳能电池板和太阳能电池板等新技术人工智能。但到目前为止，这些投资还没有明显打动公众。
推定的共和党提名人特朗普坚称，拜登的想法将破坏经济，电动汽车将与汽油等成熟燃料相抵触。他说，企业减税将通过让企业选择自己的道路来更好地促进增长，而更高关税的威胁将使它们将工厂工作留在美国。
“每个人都想买一辆电动车吗?”特朗普在最近的一次集会上问道，他在集会上遭到了异口同声的“不!”
拜登去年在Wolfspeed位于达勒姆的总部发表讲话时，称其芯片不仅为经济提供动力，还保护经济免受供应链中断和来自中国的竞争的影响。
“这是一个游戏规则的改变者，”他说。“我们正在大幅度扭转局面。”
Wolfspeed的新工厂已经开始安装其工业炉，其温度只有太阳温度的一半。该工厂准备在年底前开始生产，而全国各地宣布的许多其他政府激励措施仍处于蓝图或建设阶段。
在获得政府批准之前，该公司可能会通过拜登《降低通胀法案》的税收抵免获得支持。它还通过商务部申请了资金，作为2022年芯片和科学法案的一部分。
Wolfspeed首席执行官格雷格·洛表示，政府支持的可能性“非常重要”，因为该公司一直在寻求生产更多的碳化硅，这种材料可以提高计算机芯片的效率。他说，这种材料将“导致半导体历史上最重要的过渡之一”，使电动汽车、太阳能电池板、数据中心和储能等其他技术更好地工作。
即使该公司更专注于其业务而不是选举政治，查塔姆县的变化也超出了工厂的范围，可能会在11月产生影响。
人们可以看到新的酒店、新的加油站和为新住宅留出的大片土地。县专员、民主党人凯伦·霍华德表示，这场辩论是被迫的，因为民主党人指出了他们所说的兑现承诺的明确证据。霍华德强调，这些成就是县官员多年来为可持续发展奠定基础的结果，这些基础随后得到了联邦政策的补充。
她说:“感觉共和党人对选民想要什么视而不见。“为世界上最大的公司减税从来不会惠及那些勉强度日的人。“
霍华德说，沃尔夫斯皮德工厂预计将提供1800个工作岗位，这将改变家庭状况。
霍华德说:“当我们说这正在为这些家庭带来代际变化时，现在有些人的收入将超过他们整个家庭一年的收入。”
但北卡罗来纳州立法机构的共和党人表示，在该州的投资更多地与他们自己的政策有关，而不是拜登的激励措施。共和党议员认为，拜登总统任期内的通胀影响对选民更重要。
“我们降低了税收，发展了州经济，建立了全国最好的劳动力队伍，”北卡罗来纳州参议院临时主席菲尔·伯杰说。“拜登经济学在这里意味着家庭和企业的成本更高，这是选民在前往投票站时会记住的。”
特朗普和拜登都承诺增加美国的工厂生产，减少对中国等国家的依赖。到目前为止，这些数字表明拜登的政策比特朗普2017年的减税政策对制造业的贡献更大。
人口普查局的数据显示，在特朗普执政期间，工厂建设支出的年化率达到了820亿美元的峰值。截至去年3月，经通货膨胀调整后，在拜登执政期间，这一数字增加了一倍多，达到创纪录的2230亿美元。总统还增加了比特朗普在2020年疫情造成中断之前更多的制造业工作岗位。
但这并不意味着拜登的产业战略是板上钉钉的事情。
查塔姆县的记录表明，Vinfast已经缩小了其电动汽车工厂的规模，该公司在一份声明中表示，“目前正在审查工厂的建设。”
政府官员表示，成功将需要在降低先进计算机芯片相对于亚洲的生产成本方面取得突破。更多的司机也将需要转向电动汽车，并扭转最近销售放缓的趋势。
一些共和党人认为拜登的一些政策和减税都有空间，称两者结合是取得成功的最佳途径。
北卡罗来纳州共和党参议员托姆·蒂利斯投票支持为半导体工厂提供资金的《芯片和科学法案》。蒂利斯在参观了Wolfspeed的新工厂后表示，税收减免和政府财政支持的结合是吸引新工厂的关键。
他在工厂外接受采访时说:“归根结底，是平衡带来了不同。
正如Wolfspeed的Lowe所解释的那样，该公司工厂生产的芯片将有助于美国在电动汽车、太阳能电池板和人工智能领域与中国竞争。他碰巧驾驶着一辆由Lucid制造的电动汽车，其中包含他自己公司的芯片，这有助于使其续航里程达到令人印象深刻的516英里，足以让他开车去他在俄亥俄州的家乡充电一次。
这位首席执行官没有猜测选举的结果，但他表示，碳化硅等技术代表了“半导体历史上的一次巨大变革”，有助于重塑经济。
简而言之，他认为没有回头路。
“我一直告诉我们的人这一点，你知道，30年后你会回顾这一时刻，这将是你的任务控制，阿波罗13时刻，你会说，‘当这项技术发生转变时，我就在那里。’"
In one North Carolina county, it's 'growth, growth, growth.' But will Biden benefit?
SILER CITY, N.C. --At the epicenter of President Joe Biden’s promised economic boom, a slow tractor can still halt traffic.
Just 81,000 people live in rural Chatham County, North Carolina. There are 1,076 farms. The old mill now houses a dance studio, a grocer and a steakhouse. For work, many people have no choice but to commute to nearby Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh.
But after years of careful planning, Chatham County has started to change.
The new Wolfspeed factory — six football fields long — overlooks I-64 and will soon produce advanced wafers for computer chips. Automaker Vinfast is scheduled to open a factory as well. Both projects stem in large part from incentives that Biden signed into law.
Developers, including the Walt Disney Corp., plan to build several thousand new homes.
“When the right opportunity came along, we were there and we were ready,” said Greg Lewis, who owns the steakhouse. “It is growth, growth, growth.”
That same economic story is being replicated in a number of other critical battleground states, including Arizona and Georgia.
But while the kind of enthusiasm voiced by Lewis would usually mean a strong tailwind for an incumbent president, so far thiselectionyear there is little evidence from polling that Americans are giving Biden credit for the gains as voters still focus instead on inflation still climbing at 3.4% annually.
Places like Chatham County show how this year’s presidential campaign offers two conflicting visions for America's economic future.
Voters face a decades-defining choice about what can do more for growth: former President Donald Trump's preference for tax cuts skewed toward business and the wealthy or the targeted government investments backed by Biden as well as possible tax increases to fund programs for the middle class.
The county backed Biden over Trump in 2020 but sits in the solidly Republican congressional district of Rep. Richard Hudson. He voted against the Democratic president's policies and his office declined to answer questions about whether the investments in his district are a positive.
Just how much the influx of federal and private sector money affects the political dynamics in North Carolina and beyond will have a lot to say about who will win November's presidential election.
Biden is campaigning on how his policies have helped pump hundreds of billions of dollars in private and federal investment into companies, helping to revive the faded computer chip sector and pioneer newer technologies such as electric vehicles, solar panels andartificial intelligence. But so far, the investments have not significantly swayed the public.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, maintains that Biden’s ideas would wreck the economy and that EVs will flop against a proven fuel such as gasoline. He says corporate tax cuts would do more to bolster growth by letting companies choose their own path, and a threat of higher tariffs would cause them to keep their factory jobs inside the United States.
“Would everybody like to buy an electric car?” Trump asked at a recent rally, where he was met with a chorus of “No!”
When Biden spoke at Wolfspeed’s headquarters in Durham last year, he described its chips as not just powering the economy but protecting it from supply chain disruptions and competition from China.
“It’s a game changer,” he said. “We’re turning things around in a big way.”
The new Wolfspeed factory has begun installing its industrial furnaces that heat to half of the sun's temperatures. The factory is prepared to start production by the end of the year, while many of the other announced government incentives around the country are still blueprints or in the construction phase.
Pending administration approval, the company may receive support through tax credits from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. It also has applied for funding through the Commerce Department as part of the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act.
Wolfspeed CEO Gregg Lowe said the potential for government support has been “very important” as the company has sought to produce more silicon carbide, a material that increases the efficiency of computer chips. He said the material will “lead to one of the most important transitions in the history of semiconductors,” allowing EVs, solar panels, data centers and other technologies such as energy storage to work better.
Even if the company is more focused on its business than electoral politics, the changes in Chatham County go beyond the factory in ways that could matter in November.
People can see the new hotel, the new gasoline stations and the acres of lots set aside for new housing. County Commissioner Karen Howard, a Democrat, said the debate is being forced as Democrats point to what they say is clear evidence they are delivering on their promises. Howard stressed that the gains came as a result of years of county officials' groundwork for sustainable growth that was then complemented by federal policies.
“It feels like Republicans have turned a blind eye to what voters want,” she said. “Tax cuts for the biggest boys in the world never got down to the person who is barely scraping by.”
Howard said the expected total of 1,800 jobs at the Wolfspeed facility will transform households.
“When we say it's making generational change for these families, you now have individuals who will make more than their entire family did in a year,” Howard said.
But Republicans in North Carolina's legislature say investments in the state had more to do with their own policies than the incentives from Biden. GOP lawmakers are making the argument that the impact of inflation during Biden's presidency matters more to voters.
“We’ve lowered taxes, grown the state economy and built the nation’s best workforce," said Phil Berger, president pro tempore of the North Carolina Senate. "Bidenomics here means higher costs for families and businesses, which is what voters will remember when heading to the polls.”
Both Trump and Biden have committed to increasing factory production in the U.S. and making it less reliant on countries such as China. So far, the numbers suggest that Biden’s policies have done more for manufacturing than Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
Census Bureau figures show that the annualized rate of factory construction spending peaked at $82 billion annually under Trump. As of last March, adjusting for inflation, it has more than doubled under Biden to a record $223 billion. The president has also added more manufacturing jobs than Trump did before the disruptions caused by the 2020 pandemic.
But that does not mean Biden’s industrial strategy is a sure thing.
Chatham County records indicate that Vinfast has scaled down the footprint of its EV plant, with the company saying in a statement that it's "currently reviewing the construction of the factory.”
Administration officials say success will require breakthroughs to lower the production costs of advanced computer chips relative to Asia. More drivers will also need to switch to EVs and reverse the recent slowdown in sales.
Some Republicans see room both for some of Biden's policies as well as tax cuts, saying that a mix was the optimal course for success.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., voted for the CHIPS and Science Act, which funds semiconductor plants. Tillis said after touring Wolfspeed's new factory that the combination of tax breaks and government financial support has been key for attracting new factories.
“At the end of the day, it’s the balance that makes the difference,” he said in an interview outside the factory.
As Wolfspeed's Lowe explained it, the chips produced by the company's factory will help the U.S. to compete against China in the EV, solar panel and artificial intelligence sectors. He happens to drive an EV made by Lucid that contains his own company’s chips, which help give it an impressive range of 516 miles, enough for him to drive to his Ohio hometown with a single charging stop.
The CEO did not speculate about the outcome of the election, but he said technologies such as silicon carbide represent “a monumental change in the history of semiconductors” that is helping to remake the economy.
In short, he sees no going back.
“I tell our people this all the time, you know, in 30 years you’re going to look back to this moment and it’s going to be your mission control, Apollo 13 moment, where you say, ‘I was there when this technology switched.’”
