Curbing Reliance on China Needs an Army of Workers
$1 million of subsidies per giga-factory job says a lot about where the most urgent manufacturing shortage lies.
The scene at a Stellantis battery facility — not your grandfather’s carmaking factory.
Photographer: FRANCOIS LO PRESTI/AFPIf Roald Dahl’s stories were rewritten with industrial policy in mind, “Charlie and the Chocolate Giga-factory” would be a European bestseller. Nothing inspires childlike wonder among politicians like the manufacture of electric-vehicle batteries and other critical technology across an area equivalent to scores of soccer fields. Governments shell out subsidies by the billions to win the golden ticket of greening the grid and onshoring jobs while reducing reliance on China.
As in the original, though, the race isn’t without risk. Last week saw Ford Motor Co. get $9.2 billion in US government loans and Intel Corp. receive a $10.9 billion German subsidy package — which on a per-job basis is getting into six-to-seven figure territory. And with more than 300 giga-factories in the pipeline, the war for talent is running hot. Amid a post-Covid worker crunch, there have been hiring and training bottlenecks such as at General Motors Co. or Tesla Corp., which makes ramping up production harder — something highlighted by a recently released European auditors’ report on battery policy.