Hemlock Semiconductor has been one of Michigan’s most prolific corporate welfare vacuums, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has sure helped Hemlock suck. Just last year, she finagled $325 million in federal subsidies for the firm from President Joe Biden. Today, she claims President Donald Trump wants to discuss shoveling even more semiconductor subsidies at a different firm.

Before Whitmer’s invite is sent out, someone should brief Trump on her Hemlock history. 

As a state senator in 2008, she voted for a law to provide refundable tax credits to Hemlock. Often mistaken for tax cuts, refundable credits are subsidies that offset expenses, even to the point of totally reversing the money flow so one supposed “taxpayer” is implicitly getting checks from the others.

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The injustice of this was pointed out by then-Sen. Nancy Cassis, R-Novi, who voted against the law.

“The name of the company is Hemlock Semiconductor,” said Cassis, in her remarks before the vote. “At a minimum of $311 million to approximately $357 million, these refundable Michigan business tax credits will be subsidized by Michigan taxpayers, leaving a significant deficit in the General Fund in the years 2012 through 2023. Considering the state of all our businesses in Michigan that could certainly be helped with broad-based tax relief, giving so much to one company is unprecedented.”

In 2010, another special deal allowed a 32% reduction in power bills for a Hemlock facility. Still in the Senate, Whitmer voted for that as well. 

An analysis from 2014 revealed Hemlock was by that point swimming in state and local subsidies, and that the electricity deal alone had been worth $60 million per year. The report estimated the power hungry Hemlock facility was the largest single electricity user in the state, sucking down triple the power consumed by all the homes in Ann Arbor and Lansing combined. 

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The power deal was so outlandish that when it came up for renewal in 2014, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and General Motors both opposed it. A GM lobbyist reportedly testified that paying for Hemlock’s sweet deal was hiking the car company’s taxes by $1 million per year. 

How much was this hurting small businesses? 

Whitmer probably wasn’t worrying over it. 

Faced with complaints from salon owners suffering because they had been shut down by her COVID edicts, Whitmer infamously advised their customers to “google” how to cut their own hair. 

She is a career politician practically born inside the state capitol and the impact of her actions on mere private sector entrepreneurs hasn’t ever been high on the agenda. Her father was a career government official and former CEO of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan, and her mother was an assistant state attorney general. Her people are corporations with armies of lobbyists and lawyers like her parents, and firms like Hemlock are purposely built to exploit that weakness. 

As governor in 2022, she announced another $27 million deal for Hemlock. And then in February of last year, she announced a $109 million incentive deal for Dow Corning, Hemlock’s parent company, to build solar panel components. 

Whitmer bragged the Dow Corning deal would lead to “1,100 good-paying jobs.” 

That’s only $99,000 per job! She’ll need just $24.9 billion to employ the rest of Michigan’s 251,600 officially unemployed residents!

And that’s assuming these things go according to plan. They often do not.

In 2010, the year Whitmer was voting to pay Hemlock to use electricity, Tennessee lawmakers also handed Hemlock a subsidy deal, this one to build a facility in Clarksville. 

“Things began to turn sour in Clarksville just prior to New Year’s Day 2013, even as the plant was expected to open and launch production,” reported The Tennessean in December 2014. “Hemlock Semiconductor instead announced the permanent layoff of most of its Clarksville work force.”

According to a 2015 estimate from a local Tennessee think tank, “about $95 million of the corporate welfare doled out to the company is still outstanding and can’t be recouped by taxpayers.” The Tennessean reporter concluded similarly: “Hemlock Semiconductor, in and of itself, will go down in history as a disaster for Clarksville-Montgomery, the state of Tennessee, and the nation’s industrial complex.”

But since January 2016, Tennessee added more than 346,000 jobs, while Michigan has added just 227,000. The Volunteer state’s lopsided advantage is even more so because Michigan has 2.9 million additional residents to feed.

President Trump isn’t shy about pointing out a loser, and the loser here sure wasn’t Tennessee.