Biden is coming to NC on Thursday. Here’s why he might have chosen Greensboro.
President Joe Biden on Thursday will visit North Carolina A&T State University, the country’s largest historically Black college, where he is expected to address his administration’s economic policies and their potential contribution to the state’s recent successes in landing major corporations.
The president will “discuss his Administration’s efforts to make more in America, rebuild our supply chains here at home, and bring down costs for the American people as part of Building a Better America,” the White House said in a media advisory Wednesday.
A source familiar with the visit told McClatchy that Biden will also deliver remarks on his efforts to curb rising inflation.
Biden’s visit to N.C. A&T will be his third stop at an HBCU since taking office. Last December, he attended South Carolina State University’s fall commencement ceremony in Orangeburg. He delivered a speech on voting rights earlier this year, in January, at Clark Atlanta University in Georgia.
Visiting the Greensboro university sends “a very positive message” to the HBCU community, Thurgood Marshall College Fund President Harry Williams previously told McClatchy. But the city is also home to some of North Carolina’s most recent economic developments — major companies Biden will likely mention in his remarks.
Here are the biggest economic expansions coming to Greensboro and surrounding areas.
Boom Supersonic (1,761 jobs)
Boom Supersonic, a fledgling airplane maker with plans to reinvent supersonic passenger travel, announced in February it would build a $500 million “flagship” production facility at Greensboro’s Piedmont Triad International Airport.
The company received an incentive package worth $121.5 million from the state of North Carolina and Guilford County.
The facility will employ up to 1,761 workers earning an average salary of $68,792 per year, according to the state’s Commerce Department.
Betting on Boom’s success could be risky for North Carolina. The company has yet to manufacture and demonstrate its hallmark product: a 205-foot passenger jet that should be able to fly at 1,300 mph. That’s faster than the speed of sound and almost twice as fast as today’s fastest airliners.
Toyota (1,750 jobs)
The Greensboro area will also be home to a new Toyota battery plant, the company announced in mid-December. Its facility will cost $1.29 billion and employ at least 1,750 employees.
North Carolina and Randolph County will contribute $438.7 million worth of incentives.
Toyota is working hard to reinvent itself as one of the world’s leading producers of electric vehicles. Its new battery plant — located on 1,800 acres of sprawling land in Liberty, North Carolina — may play a pivotal role in that agenda.
Should Toyota reach its ambitious goals, the company may eventually expand North Carolina’s battery plant with a second development phase. Mark Poole, of the Commerce Department, said the state anticipates phase two may begin in the 2030s and elicit another round of state incentives.
VinFast (7,500 jobs)
It’s not coming to Greensboro, but Biden has claimed some credit for attracting VinFast, North Carolina’s largest economic expansion of the last year.
The startup auto manufacturer announced last month it would build a production facility in Moncure, a small community in southern Chatham County.
Founded in 2017, VinFast got its start making gasoline vehicles with BMW-licensed engines.
But the company is changing tack after dismal returns on investment. VinFast reportedly lost more than $1 billion in 2021 on its petroleum-powered autos. Moving forward, the carmaker is committing entirely to electric SUVs.
Some of them will come out of North Carolina. VinFast will build in Moncure at the state’s Triangle Innovation Point megasite. A new production facility for complete vehicles and battery packs will cost the company more than $4 billion. The state is contributing $854 million over 32 years, Chatham County another $400 million.
VinFast hopes to employ 7,500 people by 2027 earning a minimum salary of $51,096 per year.
“Today’s announcement that the electric vehicle maker VinFast will build an electric vehicle and battery manufacturing facility in North Carolina — $4 billion to create more than 7,000 jobs and hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles and batteries — is the latest example of my economic strategy at work,” Biden said in a statement after VinFast’s announcement.
North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers rejected the president’s claim. They credit Republican policies at the state level for cultivating the state’s corporation-friendly environment.
This story was originally published April 13, 2022 at 3:41 PM.
