Enlarge / Intel’s uncompleted Fab 42 in Chandler, AZ.

Intel announced today that it would spend $7 billion to complete Fab 42, a factory in Chandler, Arizona that will eventually be used to build chips on Intel’s 7nm manufacturing process. According to Intel’s release, the facility will “directly create 3,000 high-tech, high-wage Intel jobs for process engineers, equipment technicians, and facilities-support engineers and technicians who will work at the site” and that a further 7,000 jobs will be created indirectly to support the facility. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich made the announcement at the White House with President Donald Trump; Krzanich briefly attracted controversy last summer when he canceled a Trump fundraising event.

In an e-mail to Intel employees after the announcement (PDF), Krzanich said he made the announcement at the White House as a show of support for “the Administration’s policies to level the global playing field and make US manufacturing competitive worldwide through new regulatory standards and investment policies.” Krzanich also noted that Intel is “one of the top five exporters and top two R&D spenders in the US—despite the fact that from a tax and regulatory position we have been disadvantaged relative to the rest of the world where we compete.”

Though Krzanich bemoans US taxes and regulations, it’s also worth noting that US government restrictions make it more difficult for Intel to build cutting-edge chip manufacturing facilities outside of the United States in the first place. Under the terms of the Wassenaar Arrangement, Intel needs to get government approval before it can export manufacturing equipment capable of making anything smaller than 45nm chips (that number changes over time as manufacturing processes improve). This is one reason why Intel only has one factory in China and why that factory was making then-outdated 65nm chips when it opened in 2010. It’s not that Intel can’t build advanced chip factories outside of the US, but it does appear to be easier overall to keep the most advanced processes in the US.