this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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EU backs German chip fabs with โ‚ฌ623m State aid (www.eenewseurope.com)
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[โ€“] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Mind you, a major reason for why Saxony is full of Nazis and all educated people leave is because after the reunification all of the industry and related infrastructure was torn down with promises of being replaced, which then never happened. Most political parties have promised to do so and it barely happened.

What did happen was that the German solar panel industry made its home over there. And it flourished and did very well, employing tens of thousands of workers โ€“ until the conservative government (following "advice" from their coal buddies) not only axed subsidies but outright banned new installations at a time when the industry was running almost entirely on domestic sales. This instantly killed the entire industry, caused a wave of unemployment, gave Chinese manufacturers an inroad that ensures the German solar industry will never bounce back, and evaporated tax income that could've been used to pay for better infrastructure to attract more companies. And, of course, it didn't endear the people over there to the major parties.

Getting tech companies to open factories or fabs in East Germany is something we've been trying to do for quite some time now. From the companies' perspective there's plenty of space in convenient locations and educated workers are easy to find in the area when there's actual jobs for them. From the country's perspective, reindustrializing the region gives us (besides tax income) a chance of snapping it out of the sense of doom and abandonment that makes it such an especially fertile ground for far-right influence. And this time the fabs won't compete with coal or automotive so the conservatives won't crony them out of existence.

It's not even the first new fab near Dresden; ESMC (a joint venture between TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, and NXP) is currently building one intended to make 12-16 nm wafers. Not the most prestigious nodes but the kind of stuff that's used in bulk by various industries.

[โ€“] MigratingApe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

gave Chinese manufacturers an inroad that ensures the German solar industry will never bounce back,

Are we watching in slow motion over the last decade(?) the same scenario play out with automotive industry?

[โ€“] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Less so. The thing with solar was that the German companies were forcibly put out of business right when the Chinese companies had the tech figured out and were expanding aggressively.

As a result the Chinese now fill a mature market and any new company needs to fight to displace them. Also, they've had two decades to improve their products so any new German company world start with a market disadvantage and a tech disadvantage. And of course they have cheaper production costs so any new German product would be more expensive, to boot.

In comparison, while the German car industry is doing its best to avoid being competitive, they actually do still make at least some decent cars. They even noticed that there is a market for cars under 40,000 โ‚ฌ โ€“ way too late but still in time to not entirely lose the segment.

Also, of course, the government is actually helping rather than harming them. In fact, it's bending over backwards to fulfill their every wish, as per usual.