DeSantis touts benefits and importance of Florida's growing semiconductor manufacturing sector

(The Center Square) — Gov. Ron DeSantis highlighted the state's historic investment in semiconductor manufacturing in the Sunshine State on Friday.

"We have a lot of exciting things going on in the state of Florida if you look at where we are in things like aerospace, aviation, military and defense, transportation logistics, we are really, really leading the way across a lot of different industries," DeSantis said.

According to DeSantis, Florida has 20 major military installations, three spaceports, 15 deep water seaports, 20 commercial service airports, more than 100 other airports and 24,000 manufacturing plants.

DeSantis pointed out that a lot of what is used in those industries are semiconductors, further noting that this technology is essential to certain businesses not only in Florida or the United States but across the globe as well.

"You could actually do everything at this point, soup to nuts, from many of these industries and not have to leave the state of Florida, because we've put an emphasis on workforce, on infrastructure, so we have the ability to have a strong supply chain," DeSantis said.

DeSantis stated that the semiconductors are foundational and used in many devices. He added that one reason for China having ambitions to overtake Taiwan is that Taiwan is a significant hub for chip manufacturing.

"That's something that would have major impacts on the entire economy throughout the entire world - if you were able to see the CCP take over that industry, let alone Taiwan," DeSantis said "So we want to do something domestically, this is something we have been working towards for a number of years."

DeSantis stated that Florida is now the fifth-largest employer of semiconductor manufacturing in the nation and a leader in advanced packaging of chips.

"We've continued to invest, including most recently we just awarded last week $35 million in workforce capital dollars to 28 school districts, for both high schools and technical colleges… and eight state colleges including Valencia, for workforce capital costs for semiconductor education programs," DeSantis said.

The awards were meant to complement an already awarded $28 million in investments made by the Department of Commerce, with DeSantis further stating that these investments will give young people the tools they need to be able to be in this industry.