Why Saudi Arabia Imports Sand | December 10, 2019 | Half as Interesting
Posted on 03/14/2022 8:16:42 PM PDT by blam
Dear liberals: Pretty soon, your iPhone could be assembled in a country where homosexuality is punishable by death, and religious dissidents are sometimes beheaded.
In what could be a victory for Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s effort to attract tech companies to help diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy away from oil and gas, Foxconn, the Taiwanese consumer tech giant that’s one of Apple’s biggest contractors, has reportedly submitted a proposal to build a $9 billion factory in the Kingdom.
WSJ reports that the kingdom “is reviewing an offer from the company, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, to build a dual-line foundry for surface-mount technology and wafer fabrication in Neom, a tech-focused city-state the kingdom is developing in the desert.”
For those who aren’t familiar with Neom, here’s what the BBC has to say about the planned futuristic tech-centric city in the desert. The Kingdom plans to use its massive sovereign wealth fund to finance the effort.
Glow-in-the dark beaches. Billions of trees planted in a country dominated by the desert. Levitating trains. A fake moon. A car-free, carbon-free city built in a straight line over 100 miles long in the desert. These are some of the plans for Neom – a futuristic eco-city that is part of Saudi Arabia’s pivot to go green. But is it all too good to be true?
Neom claims to be a “blueprint for tomorrow in which humanity progresses without compromise to the health of the planet”. It’s a $500bn (£366bn) project, part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plan to wean the country off oil – the industry that made it rich.
The factory isn’t a done deal – at least not yet. The Saudis are reportedly still conducting due diligence and “benchmarking the offer against others Foxconn has made for similar projects globally”.
The Saudis are also reportedly in talks with the UAE about potentially building the factory there.
Foxconn has long been looking to diversify its factory capacity away from China. But Riyadh wants the company to guarantee that it would direct “at least two-thirds of the foundry’s production into Foxconn’s existing supply chain…to ensure there are buyers for its products and the project is ultimately profitable.”
But if the company meets all the Saudis requirements, the kingdom is prepared to co-invest, while also offering low-interest loans, and other incentives.
Of course, just because Foxconn is planning to invest, doesn’t mean it will. Let’s not forget how the company supposedly promised to build a large factory in Wisconsin, but ended up with a project that was much smaller than it initially promised.
The Kingdom has struggled to recruit western businesses for Neom
Although, as we noted above, we would be curious to see how Apple reacts to Foxconn’s decision to possibly assemble the company’s phones in the kingdom.
Foxconn Halts iPhone Production At Factories In Shenzhen, China Due To Lockdown
Is someone gonna tell the author about China?
FoxConn is a rather opaque organization. They were going to build a mega factory in Wisconsin at one time, but it sort of disappeared without comment. Still, getting out of China is a wise move.
Waiter there’s sand in my chips.
China will begin losing the manufacturing status very shortly.
This is the time to put up really high protectionist tariffs and bring it all home. For good.
Lefties are very selective in their outrage. They hate all American conservatives but love muslims and never miss a chance to praise muslim terrorists like Ilhan Omar. Democrats like Pete Buttigieg swoon all over terrorists and their supporters but if he set foot in Saudi Arabia or Iran without diplomatic protection they'd toss him off a building or behead him.
In short, it won't bother lefties a bit. If they were to put it in Alabama THEN they'd have a fit.
The Stone Age didn't end because people ran out of stones. -- Sheikh Yamani
The rest of the Neom keyword, sorted:
are they trying to say the chins are morally superior to the muslimes?
a turd by the clean end...
The kind of sand you need to make raw silicon for surface mounted chips is wind blown nearly pure silica sands...what country on earth is nearly covered with that exact asset? Saudi Arabia is the Saudi Arabia of wind blown silica sands.
“Dear liberals: Pretty soon, your iPhone could be assembled in a country where homosexuality is punishable by death, and religious dissidents are sometimes beheaded.”
The Saudis are allowing lax laws in Neom. I’m not sure if they would go so far as to legalize homosexual sex or so-called “gay marriage”.
By the way, for those who attack the Saudis for this, the Bible also categorizes homosexual sex acts as capital crimes. This is in the Old and New Testaments.
This seems severe, but look at the destruction the sexual revolution has had on our society. Once perversion is tolerated in a society, soon it dominates everything.
Thanks to current govr. Tony Evers reneging on original deal
One Term Tony....I hope
Is this the Foxconn factory that Wisconsin lost?
Anti arab, anti Islam bigotry
Wisconsin did not lose the factory, Wisconsin left wingers in effect told them to go away.
Wisconsin makes cheese ....... not real stuff
Why Saudi Arabia Imports Sand | December 10, 2019 | Half as Interesting
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