Gretchen Whitmer’s big goal: A Michigan chip plant before she leaves office

• Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wants Michigan to have plans in place to make semiconductors in Michigan before her term ends
• A semiconductor fabrication plants are massive facilities Whitmer says would create up to 6,000 jobs
• Whitmer has lobbied President Donald Trump about federal backing for a plant, which could be funded under a Biden-era law

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Wednesday she wants to see Michigan land a major semiconductor fabrication plant by the end of next year — her last in office — and she appears to have a prospect in mind.

While the second-term Democrat didn’t mention a specific project during an address at Flint’s Kettering University, she announced her goal in a notable location: The state has already spent millions on a 1,200-acre site in nearby Mundy Township to prepare it for an advanced manufacturing facility.

“This would be a transformational, once-in-a-century investment,” Whitmer said of landing a potential semiconductor fabrication facility. “It would change the destiny of an entire region, making it an economic magnet for ambitious families to move here and put down roots.”

Whitmer’s second term ends in 2026, and she is not eligible for reelection.

The massive facilities, known as fabs, are highly complex manufacturing operations, used to etch silicon wafers with trillions of transistors to produce microprocessors used in all manner of electronic devices.

Building a fab would be a "monumental" task, Whitmer said, requiring enough soil and rocks to fill 400 Olympic-sized pools and more steel than the Mackinac Bridge. It would take as many as 12,000 workers to construct and, once up and running, support between 3,000 and 6,000 "good paying local jobs," she added.

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Hemlock Semiconductor, a major manufacturer near Midland, produces polysilicon, the raw material used to make semiconductors, but does not make the chips on its own.

Another nearby company, South Korean firm SK Siltron, produces the wafers but does not forge microprocessors from them. 

Whitmer wants to land a firm that will finish the production in Michigan.

The federal government could help through the CHIPS and Science Act, signature legislation passed under then-President Joe Biden in an effort to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign computer chips, a shortage of which briefly hobbled the state’s auto industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The federal law authorized $280 billion in funding to bring the supply chain for semiconductors to the US, and many projects throughout the country are already underway, with fabs under construction in states like Arizona.

In Michigan, the law has so far resulted in new funding for both Hemlock Semiconductor and SK Siltron.

But landing a fab? “A lot of this depends on our ability to work with DC,” Whitmer said, noting she had already discussed the potential with President Donald Trump.

For years, Whitmer has placed the electric vehicle supply chain at the center of her economic development strategy. But some of the state’s most ambitious EV projects have faced substantial obstacles, both from in-state resistance to the facilities and regulatory changes and uncertainty at the federal level.

A more than $2 billion EV battery project outside Big Rapids remains tied up in litigation, and General Motors dropped out of a Lansing-area battery factory and was replaced by LG. The Ford-based BlueOval Battery Park in Marshall was downsized last year, both in plant size and promised jobs.

Whitmer has repeatedly visited the White House in the first four months of Trump’s second term, visibly lobbying him for a new fighter jet at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Macomb County, which the president subsequently backed.

She told The Detroit News in February that she had raised the potential Mundy Township fab project with the president during a dinner at the White House, but she told Bridge Michigan at the time that she didn’t mention any specific project.

In her Wednesday speech,  Whitmer said she’d been “working on this for several years with state and federal partners.” 

She called on Michiganders to call policymakers and urge them to support a facility in the state. And she had a warning for state lawmakers looking to “disarm” state incentives that could be crucial to the project: “Hell no.” 

The Republican House majority has proposed cutting Whitmer’s signature economic development incentive programs in order to fund road repairs.

One of the programs, the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve (SOAR) fund, was used in 2022 for $27 million in upgrades near a Thomas Township site in order to secure an expansion by Hemlock Semiconductor.

House Speaker Matt Hall, a Richland Republican, voted to create the SOAR fund in 2021 but has since criticized the program. Speaking Tuesday, he called it a “corporate giveaway” and an example of state government “putting corporations over everyone else.”