<\/p>\n
Austin, Texas<\/p>\n
4:57 P.M. CDT<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT:\u00a0 Hello, Austin!\u00a0 How you doing?\u00a0 (Applause.) Well, it is wonderful to see all of you here today.\u00a0 First of all, give Nicole an outstanding round of applause for the great job that she did.\u00a0 (Applause.)<\/p>\n
It is wonderful to be here at Applied Materials.\u00a0 I want to thank Mike and everybody who helped out hosting us and a wonderful tour of the facility.\u00a0 It was incredible.\u00a0 Rick was showing me some of your \u201cclean rooms\u201d where you are building the equipment that makes the chips that is basically powering everything that you guys are taking pictures with right now.\u00a0 (Laughter.)\u00a0 Smartphones, computers, iPads, laptops.\u00a0 And it is just remarkable to see.\u00a0 Every time I walk through these kinds of facilities I’m thinking, this is just magic.\u00a0 I don’t know how they do it.<\/p>\n
Somebody was explaining to me that — I guess one of the wafers was being cleaned, and he said, this would be the equivalent — it was Alex who told me this — Alex is around here somewhere — the equivalent of if you were mowing the South Lawn but every blade of grass was exactly cut at the same height within a single human hair.\u00a0 That’s how precise things are.\u00a0 That sounds pretty precise to me.\u00a0 And if that’s, by the way, the precision that you operate on, if that\u2019s how you define a clean room, then Sasha and Malia are going to have to step up their game at home.\u00a0 (Laughter.)\u00a0 Because it is not that clean.\u00a0 (Laughter.)<\/p>\n
I want to thank your Mayor, Lee Leffingwell, who\u2019s doing a great job.\u00a0 (Applause.)\u00a0 Lee is doing outstanding work every day and helping to bring the Austin community together.\u00a0 Congressman Lloyd Doggett is here.\u00a0 (Applause.)\u00a0 They\u2019ve been great hosts.\u00a0 We actually have a special guest — the Mayor of San Antonio in the house — my friend, Julian Castro is here.\u00a0 (Applause.)<\/p>\n
Now, I\u2019ve spent the day in Austin talking with folks about what we can do to reignite the true engine of America\u2019s economic growth — a thriving, rising middle class and a dynamic, cutting-edge economy.\u00a0 That\u2019s our priority.\u00a0 That should be Washington\u2019s top priority.\u00a0 (Applause.)\u00a0 And I see three things that we need to focus on to do it.<\/p>\n
Number one, we’ve got to make America a magnet for good jobs.\u00a0 Number two, we’ve got to help people earn the skills they need to do those jobs.\u00a0 Number three, we’ve got to make sure people\u2019s hard work is rewarded so that they can make a decent living doing those jobs.<\/p>\n
And if you watch the news, sometimes you may think that there\u2019s just doom and gloom out there.\u00a0 But the truth is there\u2019s incredible stuff going on all across America and right here in Austin that I think can be good models for the rest of America to follow.<\/p>\n
This morning I visited Manor New Tech High School, where students are learning high-tech skills that companies like Applied are looking for right now.\u00a0 They are getting excited, working with math and science and technology and engineering.\u00a0 And it’s a hands-on high school where subjects are integrated, and kids are building things and conducting experiments at very early ages.\u00a0 And it’s sparking their imagination in ways that may lead them to start up the next Applied, or come here and work at Applied.<\/p>\n
And then I joined a few local families for lunch to talk about how we can make sure that hard work pays off with wages you can live on and raise a family, with health care that you can count on, and the chance to put away some money for retirement.\u00a0 And we also had good barbeque — (laughter) — which is necessary for economic growth.\u00a0 (Laughter.)\u00a0 Some good barbeque once in a while.\u00a0 And then I came to Applied Materials to talk about what we can do to make America a magnet for new jobs in manufacturing.<\/p>\n
After shedding jobs for a decade, our manufacturers have added now about 500,000 new manufacturing jobs over the past three years.\u00a0 (Applause.)\u00a0 That\u2019s good news.\u00a0 Caterpillar is bringing jobs back from Japan, and Ford is bringing jobs back from Mexico.\u00a0 And after placing plants in other countries like China, Intel is opening its most advanced plant right here at home.\u00a0 This year, Apple started making Macs in America again.\u00a0 (Applause.)<\/p>\n
So there are some good trend lines there, but we’ve got to do everything we can to strengthen that trend.\u00a0 We’ve got to do everything we can to help the kind of high-tech manufacturing that you’re doing right here at Applied.\u00a0 And we want to make sure it takes root here in Austin and all across the country.\u00a0 And that means, first of all, creating more centers of high-tech manufacturing.<\/p>\n
Last year, we launched our first manufacturing innovation institute in Youngstown, Ohio, to develop new technologies and equip workers with the skills required to master 3-D printing techniques.\u00a0 And in my State of the Union address, I called on Congress to set up 15 more of these manufacturing hubs all across America, and I said that my administration was going to go ahead and move forward with three new hubs on our own, even without congressional action.<\/p>\n
Well, today, we’re launching a competition for those hubs.\u00a0 We are looking for businesses and universities that are willing to partner together to help their region — help turn their region into global centers of high-tech jobs.\u00a0 Because we want the next revolution in manufacturing to be \u201cMade in America.\u201d\u00a0 (Applause.)\u00a0 We\u2019re going to do that.<\/p>\n
The truth is, over the past couple decades, too many communities have been hit hard when plants closed down and jobs dried up.\u00a0 The economy obviously is changing all the time.\u00a0 Nobody knows that better than folks here at Applied.\u00a0 I was talking to somebody who\u2019s — after showing me the wafer and some chips, and then they showed me a smartphone, they pointed to the smartphone and they said, 40 years ago, there\u2019d be about $3 billion just trying to get this much computing power in this little thing, except it would fill up a whole room.<\/p>\n
And so the economy is dynamic.\u00a0 Technology is constantly changing.\u00a0 That means we\u2019ve got to adapt as well.\u00a0 And even as we\u2019re working to reverse the trend of communities that have been hard hit with old manufacturing leaving, we\u2019ve got to propose partnerships with local leaders in manufacturing communities to help attract new investment in the infrastructure and the research that will attract new jobs and new businesses, so that communities that have been knocked down can get back up and get back on their feet.<\/p>\n
And we should help our workers get the training they need to compete for the industries of tomorrow.\u00a0 No job in America should go unfilled just because we don\u2019t have anybody with the right skills.\u00a0 (Applause.)\u00a0 And that\u2019s a priority.\u00a0 Now, some of your colleagues that I met, some of them have advanced degrees.\u00a0 Some of them came to apply basically right out of high school.\u00a0 But all of you, whether it was, in some cases, through a university education, in some cases the military, in some cases just on-the-job training — all of you have specialized skills that are exactly what we need to continue to grow our economy.\u00a0 But we\u2019ve got a whole bunch of folks out there who don\u2019t have those skills, either because the education system failed them or because their skills have been rendered obsolete.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s why I want to rethink how our high school kids are prepared.\u00a0 I want to make sure that we\u2019re training two million Americans at our community colleges for skills that will lead directly to a job.\u00a0 (Applause.)\u00a0 And that\u2019s also why we\u2019ve got to make sure that college is affordable and people aren\u2019t burdened by a mountain of debt so that they can continue to upgrade their skills as well.<\/p>\n
Now, if we want to manufacture the best products, we\u2019ve also got to invest in and cultivate the best ideas.\u00a0 Innovation, ingenuity — that\u2019s the constant of the American economy.\u00a0 That\u2019s one of the constants of our character.\u00a0 It\u2019s what keeps America on the cutting-edge.<\/p>\n
And just before I came here, I visited the Capital Factory, which, as some of you know, is a place that helps start-ups take off.\u00a0 And everywhere you turn, somebody has got a new idea.\u00a0 They\u2019re all thinking big.\u00a0 They\u2019re taking risks.\u00a0 It\u2019s exciting.<\/p>\n
There was a young woman who is in a wheelchair and physically disabled but is just incredibly inspired to make sure that she\u2019s not in any way confined by that situation.\u00a0 And she\u2019s basically designed and is now manufacturing a car that people in wheelchairs can just drive their wheelchair right into the car and start driving.<\/p>\n
And then you had a young man who had a 3-D camera — it was about this big — and basically from filming either a static image or in the round, can basically download that immediately and create a 3-D image, and then use that for 3-D manufacturing\u00a0 — 3-D printing and manufacturing.\u00a0 And what currently costs about $80,000 costs about $3,000 — the technology that he\u2019s developed.\u00a0 So they’re doing amazing stuff.<\/p>\n
And one of the things we\u2019re doing to fuel more inventiveness like this, to fuel more private sector innovation and discovery, is to make the vast amounts of America\u2019s data open and easy to access for the first time in history.\u00a0 So talented entrepreneurs are doing some pretty amazing things with data that’s already being collected by government.<\/p>\n
So over at the Capital Factory, I met with folks behind the start-up called StormPulse, which uses government data on weather to help businesses anticipate disruptions in service.\u00a0 And then you\u2019ve got a Virginia company called OPower that\u2019s used government data on trends in energy use to save its customers $200 million on their energy bills.\u00a0 There\u2019s an app called iTriage, founded by a pair of ER doctors that uses data from the Department of Health and Human Services to help users understand medical symptoms and find local doctors and health care providers.<\/p>\n
And today I\u2019m announcing that we\u2019re making even more government data available, and we\u2019re making it easier for people to find and to use.\u00a0 And that\u2019s going to help launch more start-ups.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to help launch more businesses.\u00a0 Some of them undoubtedly will be using this data powered by chips that essentially started right here at Applied Materials.\u00a0 (Applause.)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s going to help more entrepreneurs come up with products and services that we haven\u2019t even imagined yet.<\/p>\n
This kind of innovation and ingenuity has the potential to transform the way we do almost everything.\u00a0 One-third of jobs in Austin are now supported by the tech sector.\u00a0 And we should do all we can to encourage this kind of innovation economy all across America, in ways that produce new jobs and new opportunities for the middle class.<\/p>\n
And we\u2019re poised for a time of progress — if we\u2019re willing to seize it.\u00a0 Not even five years after the worst economic crisis in our lifetimes, our jobs market, our housing market are steadily healing.\u00a0 Our deficits are falling at the fastest rate in decades.\u00a0 The American auto industry has made a comeback.\u00a0 It\u2019s thriving.\u00a0 American energy is booming.\u00a0 But we\u2019ve got to keep moving forward, and we\u2019ve got to make sure that Washington is not administering self-inflicted wounds when we\u2019re making progress.<\/p>\n
So Mike and I were talking about the fact that if we can reform our tax system to eliminate some of these loopholes potentially we could lower some rates.\u00a0 That would make our businesses more competitive.<\/p>\n
Basic research, you\u2019ll hear people talk about how government is not going to do anything for us.\u00a0 Well, we all understand that the private sector powers and drives our economy.\u00a0 On the other hand, most of the private sector right now has a lot of trouble financing basic research.\u00a0 And that basic research is the foundation for everything that’s done at this company, and everything that’s done for most of your customers.\u00a0 And we can’t afford to fall behind when it comes to basic research.\u00a0 So there\u2019s some key things that we can do that shouldn’t be ideological.\u00a0 They’re not Democratic ideas or Republican ideas or independent ideas.\u00a0 They’re just good ideas that allow the government to help create the foundation, the platform, the environment in which companies like Applied Materials can thrive. And that’s what we’ve got to constantly champion.<\/p>\n
And when you’re talking to your members of Congress or you’re talking to elected officials, you’ve got to remind them we don’t want government to do everything for us, but it’s got a role to play on infrastructure, basic research — making sure that we’ve got a tax system that’s fair, making sure that we’ve got some basic stability in our budget so people aren’t always guessing what’s going to happen around the corner.<\/p>\n
Think about how this company was built.\u00a0 Back in 1967, when Applied Materials was just getting off the ground, there were five employees.\u00a0 They worked out of this small industrial unit in California.\u00a0 And I suppose they had a \u201cclean room\u201d in there, but I don’t know what it looked like.\u00a0 (Laughter.)\u00a0 But what they lacked in size, they made up with ingenuity and imagination and risk-taking.\u00a0 And over the years, as you grew to become a leader in high-tech manufacturing, that ingenuity never faltered.\u00a0 Whether you\u2019ve been with this company for decades — as I know some of you have — or just for a year, you\u2019re all focused on the future.\u00a0 Every day you’re pushing the limits of technology a little bit further.<\/p>\n
And you’re not alone, because somewhere over at the Capital Factory, there\u2019s an entrepreneur mapping out a new product on a whiteboard that may be the next big thing.\u00a0 Somewhere over at Manor New Tech High School, there\u2019s a kid scribbling down an idea for a new invention that one day may turn into an entirely new industry.\u00a0 That\u2019s America.<\/p>\n
And when you look out across this room, what you also notice is there’s talent drawn from every segment of our society.\u00a0 We don’t care what you look like, where you come from, what your last name is.\u00a0 We just want to make sure we’re all working together to create a better future for our kids.<\/p>\n
That’s America. We innovate.\u00a0 We adapt.\u00a0 We move forward.\u00a0 That’s what Austin is all about.\u00a0 That’s what’s going on in this city.\u00a0 (Applause.)\u00a0 And that’s what I want to keep on promoting as your President of the United States of America.<\/p>\n
Thank you, everybody.\u00a0 God bless you.\u00a0 God bless America.<\/p>\n
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Remarks by the President at Applied Materials, Inc. – Austin, TX Austin, Texas 4:57 P.M. CDT THE PRESIDENT:\u00a0 Hello, Austin!\u00a0 How you doing?\u00a0 (Applause.) Well, it is wonderful to see all of you here today.\u00a0 First of all, give Nicole an outstanding round of applause for the great job that she did.\u00a0 (Applause.) It … Continue reading President Obama in Austin – given speech at Applied Materials on 5\/9\/13<\/span>