Then-Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, Gov. Mike DeWine joined by politicians and business leaders break ground ceremony for Intel’s new semiconductor manufacturing site, September 9, 2022, in Licking County, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal / Republish photo only with original story)
Ohio U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno has joined President Donald Trump in asking for tech giant Intel’s CEO to resign due to his reported ties to the Chinese government.
Moreno has also asked for a fraud investigation into Intel’s continued delays on the state’s long-awaited semiconductor manufacturing plant.
Ohio’s multi-billion-dollar semiconductor manufacturing plant has faced delay after delay after delay, and was supposed to be operational by now.
“It was an unrealistic expectation that they would be producing chips in the summer of 2025,” Dorsey Hager with the Columbus/Central Ohio Building Trades Council said last Thursday.
That’s thousands of construction jobs stalled, ones that Hager said Intel promised when they broke ground at the central Ohio construction site in 2022.
“They talked about ramping up to close to 8,000 construction workers at the peak,” Dorsey said. “We have close to 1,200 people out there right now.”
That’s also hundreds of millions of Ohio taxpayer dollars that state Sen. Bill DeMora, D-Columbus, says are being unused by Intel.
“We’re never getting the jobs we were promised, we’re never getting the economic development we were promised,” DeMora said. “All that’s happened is we spent a lot of state money on infrastructure, drove up property rates for all the people that live there, and now we’ve got a boondoggle.”
After years of the company’s stock plummeting, plus repeated layoffs, the company moved its expected completion date from 2025 to the 2030s.
Still, Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel said he believes Intel will stay true to its original promise of the multi-billion-dollar investment.
“Nothing’s easy, especially in a changing industry like the one they’re in, but they’ve already made a lot of investment and they’re still working on it,” Tressel said Thursday.
Asked about Ohio taxpayer money being spent on something that doesn’t exist yet, Tressel said that’s fair and frustrating for sure.
“We have contractual things that have to be met, I don’t think those are for a couple more years, but I understand the frustration,” he responded. “Big things are hard; sometimes the progress doesn’t happen like you’d like it to.”
Another issue is causing concern among other Republicans.
Both U.S. Sens. Jon Husted and Moreno have raised concerns about the new Intel CEO, Lip-Bu Tan. This year, Tan invested hundreds of millions in Chinese companies that have ties to their government, according to a report by Reuters.
President Donald Trump and Moreno have asked for Tan to resign, and Moreno said that the project needs to be completed, “and a fraud investigation should be initiated.”
Husted, who has been the face of Intel in Ohio since he helped bring it to the state when he was lieutenant governor, took a softer approach.
“Obviously, if someone’s a part of the CCP, it’s a problem in my mind, but I think you have to be fair until facts come out,” Tressel said.
Gov. Mike DeWine, to reporters in Dayton, echoed his second-in-command’s thoughts.
“We are always very careful who the state deals with. Anybody who is associated with the Communist Party in China — that’s a problem. We don’t trust them, we don’t like them, they’re not good,” DeWine said. “I think we have to wait, though, in this case to see what the facts are.”
DeWine referenced how “we” have not heard from Intel about this matter, he said.
“I’m sure that Intel does not, would not want to be associated with someone, and we wouldn’t want them associated with someone who would be close to the Communist Party in China, but we don’t know that for a fact at this point, so I’m going to reserve judgment on that,” he said.
We reached out to Intel, but it didn’t respond directly to us. The company released the following statement to the public later in the day:
However, its spokesperson has told us for years that their commitment to Ohio remains strong. Hager is keeping with that optimism, but DeMora doesn’t believe it’s happening.
“Intel is dead,” he said. “We’re never going to see Intel.”
DeWine said the state won’t be able to claw back money from the state’s investment in the Intel project until at least 2029.
“On January 1, 2029 is the time when we look back and we see ‘did they produce the jobs when they said they were going to do or not,’ but up until then, the contract does not provide any remedy for the state,” the governor said Thursday. “I remain confident that Intel is going to be making chips in Ohio.”
This article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.
