President Trump brought the jobs and the headlines to eastern North Carolina on Tuesday night. Air Force One swept low over a huge crowd waiting at Pitt-Greenville Airport, and the President stepped off the plane alongside NASCAR legend Richard Petty, “The King,” before taking the stage to rally for Senate candidate Michael Whatley and congressional candidate Laurie Buckhout.
The President made the economic case first. “Here in North Carolina, JetZero recently announced … the largest jobs announcement actually in North Carolina history, $4.7 billion,” he said. The White House says the Greensboro airplane factory will create about 14,560 jobs. Then Trump turned to medicine. “Remember, during COVID, everything was made in China,” he said. “We didn’t make medicine. I watched that. I didn’t like that.” Now, he said, Johnson & Johnson, Biogen, Merck, Genentech, AbbVie and others are pouring more than $10 billion into North Carolina, “building brand new plants and making our pharmaceuticals.”
“And tonight I have breaking news for you,” the President told the crowd. “Would you like some breaking news?” He called Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to the microphone, and Lutnick delivered it. “The President had as one of his fundamental objectives … to bring semiconductor manufacturing home to America, right?” Lutnick said. “It’s all made in Taiwan, right? And that’s just too far away for America. So he’s bringing it home.”
“We’re announcing Sibelco is going to build silicon manufacturing. It’s quartz manufacturing,” Lutnick said. “It is basically the foundation of semiconductors, and they’re going to build it right here in North Carolina, hundreds of millions of dollars.” Sibelco already runs high-purity quartz operations in Spruce Pine in the western part of the state, and tonight’s news puts more of America’s chip supply chain on American soil.
The White House says the boom reaches across the state, from Amazon’s $10 billion cloud and AI investment in Richmond County to Johnson & Johnson’s $2 billion campus in Wilson, AbbVie’s $1.4 billion plant in Durham and Genentech’s $2 billion expansion in Holly Springs. Early voting in North Carolina runs through Oct. 31, and Election Day is Nov. 3. Greenville heard the message loud and clear: America First means factories, paychecks and medicine made at home.
