ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. (WDRB) — Korea-based Advanced Nano Products’ hasn’t even installed much of the equipment at its first U.S. factory, which began rising from an empty lot in a business park in Elizabethtown 7 months ago.
But the company is already grading the dirt just behind its new building to prepare for the first of two or three expansions over the next few years.
ANP, which makes an additive that improves the electric conductivity of lithium-ion batteries, is one example of a surge in private investments and good-paying clean energy jobs spurred the Biden administration’s policies, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said while visiting the Elizabethtown plant on Wednesday.
The Elizabethtown factory will create 93 jobs paying an average hourly wage of $35, ANP said when it was announced in 2022. Each expansion of the plant will bring about another 100 jobs, chief operating officer James Baek said.
The plant plans to start work in May, officials said at Wednesday's event.
The firm’s biggest customer is also under construction nearby: Ford Motor Co.’s BlueOval SK, the $6 billion pair of EV battery plants in Glendale, Ky. But ANP plans to serve other battery plants along the Interstate 65 and 75 corridors, Baek said.
Yellen used the Kentucky perch to tout Biden’s industrial and economic policies — primarily the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act — while decrying tax cutting and “trickle-down economics” that she said benefits only the wealthiest.
“President Biden and I are focused on creating pathways to and opportunity for the middle class in America,” Yellen said. “America’s growth isn’t meaningful if the gains are not shared. And a strong middle class will continue to lead our future.”
Under the IRA, for example, Kentucky has seen “a boom in EV-related investments,” Yellen said. BlueOval SK, the biggest economic development project in state history, is supported by $9.2 billion in low-interest financing from the U.S. Department of Energy, while the EV batteries produced there starting next year will earn billions in tax credits for Ford and its Korean partner SK On under the IRA.
During her speech, Yellen made a brief reference to the most salient criticism of Biden’s economic record: the surge in inflation that peaked in mid-2022.
“Inflation has fallen significantly, though we continue to take action to bring prices down, including health care costs,” she said.
In a brief session with reporters, Yellen said inflation is Biden’s top economic priority, pointing tohh proposals for new homebuyer tax credits to help first-time buyers into houses and to encourage owners sitting on cheap mortgages to put their homes on the market. (Some argue such policies would only further increase house prices).
“Of course, many households face costs that are truly burdensome,” Yellen said. “That said, inflation has come down (by) two-thirds and I believe it continues to be on a downward trend.”
