US President-elect Donald Trump has named Dow Chemical chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris to head his advisory council on American manufacturing. Trump made the announcement at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on 9 December, calling Liveris a leader “committed to returning jobs to the United States.”
Liveris announced at the event that Dow will build an innovation center in Midland, Michigan, focused on leveraging silicones technologies across Dow’s product line, that will involve approximately 200 R&D jobs in Michigan, including 100 newly jobs while repatriating 100 from other Dow facilities to Midland. “We chose Michigan, our home for more than 119 years, because of the highly skilled workforce in the state and because we believe the incoming presidential administration understands the importance of R&D investment and its multiplier impact on US manufacturing jobs,” Liveris says.
The center will focus on combining Dow’s existing products with new technologies gained from Dow’s recent acquisition of 100%-ownership of Dow Corning’s silicones business. R&D efforts will focus on applications such as home- and personal-care products, building and infrastructure materials, and automotive.
Dow says it has added 6,000 new jobs in the United States in the last four years, with a significant portion of those jobs resulting from manufacturing investments in the US Gulf Coast, where Dow is investing more than $6 billion. Those investments will result in approximately 500 new Dow jobs.
Liveris had also served as co-chair of President Barack Obama’s Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, formed in 2011, which worked to highlight emerging technologies that could create high-quality manufacturing jobs and enhance US global competitiveness.
By Robert Westervelt
Source: Chemical Week
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