Japanese firm shifts copper foil plans from South Carolina to Georgia

Glad they are coming to Georgia. Not so certain that giving them land AND tax breaks is smart. SC needs jobs too, so stealing jobs from the neighbor isn't always good business.

Georgia Power does have two nuclear reactors near Augusta coming online soon (late 2022 and early 2023). These are the first AP1000 model reactors in the US and will effectively double the Vogtle plant capacity which is about 1500 MW/reactor, so 4x1500= 6 GW in total. SC is a partner with the new nuclear reactors. SC and GA electric rates are actually very close.

Compared to the 9000 people working at Vogtle, this manufacturing is tiny.

All those incentive payments come out of tax payer pocket's as will any infrastructure costs to accommodate the plant. Also there is no guarantee the plant won't move when those incentives expire.

@nogardflow, lots of things came from the government's pocket. How about air traffic control and most if not all large commercial airports. Roads are built by the government, not the private sector. Without the government's help, no transcontinental roads and railroads would have existed.

Yuri,

You are right. And the internet which JT uses as its platform, would not have existing with DOD investment and public and private university support. The IT industry back in the day hated the open internet like HP, IBM, Digital, NTT, ATT and on and on. But they lost and consumers won with a government project that was improved by Universities getting public funding for advanced research. Taxpayers in the USA own the internet but received no royalties from Google, Apple, Amazon, Uber and so forth.

Actually, it is common for plants like this to build the road from the main street into their location. Just like I am responsible for my driveway at my home, the business is responsible for the private road into their plant. If the local govt road needs to be upgraded to support the new traffic, sure, the govt will use taxes to add traffic lights or perhaps to widen the road, but there won't be much done unless the road needs heavier pavement. A few hundred workers can easily be handled by even the smallest paved roads.

Same for building out of utilities that actually connect to the plant. In Georgia, utilities aren't govt owned, just govt regulated by the PUC - Public Utility Commission. Businesses don't have federal laws that mandate water, sewer, telephone service. The company will pay to expand those to their desired level. So, electrical lines, water, sewer, will each have a utility demarcation point just inside the company land, then everything farther is up to the company to pay. Utilities are known to charge crazy amounts to extend their services 150m. I've seen USD$20K quotes for internet service to extend across a road - which would use a side-ways boring tool and take less than 2 days for a crew of 3 people to accomplish. Most of that was govt permit costs and delays required to let schedules be lined up. I've seen roads torn up 3 times in 1 year because the utilities didn't coordinate their upgrades.

One wonders if the, cough cough, high quality workmanship coming out of the Boeing plant in South Carolina, you know things like wings and fuselages not lining up during assembly, trash left inside the aircraft, etc., had anything to do with the choice of Georgia over South Carolina.

Taxpayers in the US do not "own the internet".

For the first 20 yrs, the network that became the backbone of the US internet connecting govt facilities and research organizations was for govt use, but a law passed in the late 1980s allowed anyone to join that network. The govt doesn't actually lay pipe, wires, fiber. They pay private companies to do that and sign access contracts with specific terms, but the private companies own the infrastructure.

For about 10 yrs, the internet backbone (starting as 6 major network nodes then growing to 12, 20, 50, 100, ....) was used by most internet traffic in the US, but quickly it was saturated and private networking companies invested to add capacity where and as needed for their clients.

In the US, the network is private and federated, which isn't the situation for many parts of the world. Smaller countries have to use their govt to connect due to high costs. As long as the govt is hand-off, it really isn't bad. But even some democracies are far too temped and have been caught abusing their total control over network connections and tracking. I've been shocked a few times during travel to countries that blocked some internet access for unknown reasons (to me).