After years of flamboyant lies about what Foxconn would be able to achieve in Wisconsin, there’s a new deal with that foreign corporation. That new arrangement reflects a reduction of 90% or more in what Wisconsin expects and what the state will offer. Local governments have already wasted millions on absurdly grandiose, false promises
Not a single family should have lost a home over this fraud, yet over one hundred did. Will boosters of this project be able to rebuild what government action took from those families? These boosters would consider a single blade of grass gone askew on their own lawns a tragedy, but for those who lost their homes, these same men have not even a word in apology.
Ricardo Torres reports Foxconn, state agree to new deal; Foxconn expecting to hire up to 1,454 by 2025. The company originally promised to hire up to 13,000 people:
A new agreement between Foxconn Technology Group and the state announced Tuesday dramatically scales back the number of jobs the company promises to create — to only 1,454 — and reduces the capital investment to a fraction of what was originally promised.
In return, Foxconn stands to receive far less state cash.
The agreement allows for Foxconn to get a maximum of $80 million in tax credits compared to the previous agreement which would have granted the company $2.85 billion in state money if the company met certain hiring and capital investments.
Foxconn four years ago promised to bring 13,000 high-tech jobs to Wisconsin and create a massive Racine County facility that former Gov. Scott Walker and President Donald Trump, both Republicans, heralded as transformational for the state’s economy.
No significant manufacturing has taken place at the Mount Pleasant campus that the company developed with assistance from state and local government.
The number of jobs now promised amounts to a little more than 10% of the original expectation, and the company’s capital investment appears to have ended.
(Emphasis added.)
David Shepardson and Karen Pierog report Foxconn mostly abandons $10 billion Wisconsin project touted by Trump:
Taiwan electronics manufacturer Foxconn is drastically scaling back a planned $10 billion factory in Wisconsin, confirming its retreat from a project that former U.S. President Donald Trump once called “the eighth wonder of the world.”
Under a deal with the state of Wisconsin announced on Tuesday, Foxconn will reduce its planned investment to $672 million from $10 billion and cut the number of new jobs to 1,454 from 13,000.
The Foxconn-Wisconsin deal was first announced to great fanfare at the White House in July 2017, with Trump boasting of it as an example of how his “America first” agenda could revive U.S. tech manufacturing.
….
It was supposed to build cutting-edge flat-panel display screens for TVs and other devices and instantly establish Wisconsin as a destination for tech firms.
But industry executives, including some at Foxconn, were highly skeptical of the plan from the start, pointing out that none of the crucial suppliers needed for flat-panel display production were located anywhere near Wisconsin.
The plan faced local opposition too, with critics denouncing a taxpayer giveaway to a foreign company and provisions of the deal that granted extensive water rights and allowed for the acquisition and demolition of houses through eminent domain.
Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers, Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace Conditions, Foxconn’s Bait & Switch, Foxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying Jobs, The Next Guest Speaker, Trump, Ryan, and Walker Want to Seize Wisconsin Homes to Build Foxconn Plant, Foxconn Deal Melts Away, “Later This Year,” Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison, Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain, Foxconn: Failure & Fraud, Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition, Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere, Foxconn Roundup: Outside Work and Local Land, Foxconn Couldn’t Even Meet Its Low First-Year Goal, Foxconn Talks of Folding Wisconsin Manufacturing Plans, WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid, Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy, Laughable Spin as Industrial Policy, Foxconn: The ‘State Visit Project,’ ‘Inside Wisconsin’s Disastrous $4.5 Billion Deal With Foxconn,’ Foxconn: When the Going Gets Tough…, The Amazon-New York Deal, Like the Foxconn Deal, Was Bad Policy, Foxconn Roundup, Foxconn: The Roads to Nowhere, Foxconn: Evidence of Bad Policy Judgment, Foxconn: Behind Those Headlines, Foxconn: On Shaky Ground, Literally, Foxconn: Heckuva Supply Chain They Have There…, Foxconn: Still Empty, and the Chairman of the Board Needs a Nap, Foxconn: Cleanup on Aisle 4, Foxconn: The Closer One Gets, The Worse It Is, Foxconn Confirm Gov. Evers’s Claim of a Renegotiation Discussion, America’s Best Know Better, Despite Denials, Foxconn’s Empty Buildings Are Still Empty, Right on Schedule – A Foxconn Delay, Foxconn: Reality as a (Predictable) Disappointment, Town Residents Claim Trump’s Foxconn Factory Deal Failed Them, Foxconn: Independent Study Confirms Project is Beyond Repair, It Shouldn’t, Foxconn: Wrecking Ordinary Lives for Nothing, Hey, Wisconsin, How About an Airport-Coffee Robot?, Be Patient, UW-Madison: Only $99,300,000.00 to Go!, Foxconn: First In, Now Out, Foxconn on the Same Day: Yes…um, just kidding, we mean no, Foxconn: ‘Innovation Centers’ Gone in a Puff of Smoke, Foxconn: Worse Than Nothing, Foxconn: State of Wisconsin Demands Accountability, Foreign Corporation Stalls, Foxconn Notices the Noticeable, Journal Sentinel’s Rick Romell Reports the Obvious about Foxconn Project, Foxconn’s ‘Innovation’ Centers: Still Empty a Year Later, Foxconn & UW-Madison: Two Years and Less Than One Percent Later…, Accountability Comes Calling at Foxconn, Highlight’s from The Verge’s Foxconn Assessment, After Years of Promises, Foxconn Will Think of Something…by July, and Foxconn’s Venture Capital Fund.
I wonder what happens to all of the Potemkin “Innovation Centers” that Foxconn spread around the state? And the 100 megabux promised to the UW engineering school? I suspect that we won’t ever hear about any of that anymore. You have extensively documented why and that it was all “aspirational” in the first place, and was essentially a Walker campaign contribution.
I remain dubious that there will ever be anything done by Foxconn that even gets to the reduced targets. The motivation, technically and business-wise, for locating a major electronics factory in Wisco-World have been always been difficult for me to understand. There is a market for small-volume electronics contract manufacturing here. Local companies use local short-run houses to prove out designs and work out manufacturing techniques before inevitably shipping production to Asia, where manufacturing costs are dramatically lower.
Foxconn is not a short-run house, and will never be able to match high-production costs of even their own Asian factories, so why even think about doing contract manufacturing here? It remains an enigma what prompted Foxconn to even think about building in WI. It was a con all along, but who won? Foxconn didn’t, and neither did Walker, or the citizens of Vos’ district, whose great-grandchildren will still be paying for the fiasco decades from now.
My guess is the Foxconn campus will devolve into a bunch of warehouses, serviced by spiffy new roads, with a big shiny glass gazing-ball lawn-ornament in the center. It’s handily located between ORD and MKE, and there is unlikely to be much else to use it for.
There was reason for the non-technical (of whom I am one) to doubt this project, but a technical project should be judged by technical standards. At critical points in Wisconsin’s Foxconn project, your technical assessments soundly explained the improbabilities of the effort. Many thanks.
A powerful point, even in a project that claimed billions in benefits: “what happens to all of the Potemkin “Innovation Centers” that Foxconn spread around the state? And the 100 megabux promised to the UW engineering school?” The claims for this devevelopment were so overstated that, tellingly, $100 million of promises has been overlooked in the latest reporting.
We’re left with no winners, merely “a con all along, but who won? Foxconn didn’t, and neither did Walker, or the citizens of Vos’ district, whose great-grandchildren will still be paying for the fiasco decades from now.”
A bunch of warehouses as a future… all this, over these four years, for that.
Astonishing even to the jaded.