Talking up the Foxconn project – a habit of the ignorant or scheming – gets harder all the time.
Foxconn looks to have pushed back its construction schedule – to 2021 (past the presidential election). See Foxconn Appears To Push Back Opening Of Mount Pleasant Plant (‘Company Denies Delay But Offers Few Details’).
Here’s the present state of affairs, as Josh Dzieza reports One Year After Trump’s Foxconn Groundbreaking, There is Almost Nothing to Show for It:
Foxconn says it will still eventually employ 13,000 people, and that this factory is only the initial phase. The company says the factory will come online in the fourth quarter of 2020, though Gou also recently told reporters that Trump would attend the start of production next May. Foxconn has said the factory will employ 1,500 people.
Yet the building plans Foxconn submitted to the village show only 570 parking spots. At the end of last year, the company employed just 156 people in the state. It’s possible Foxconn could make up the remaining thousand or so workers by filling its currently vacant innovation centers, though its current rate of hiring makes that unlikely, and it’s probably not what anyone had in mind when they envisioned the return of manufacturing jobs to Wisconsin. To put this shortfall in perspective, Foxconn’s original target was to employ 5,200 people next year.
So one year after the groundbreaking, Foxconn owns a lot of vacant office space across Wisconsin, and it’s building something, but that something has gone from the first Gen 10.5 outside of Asia, to a much smaller Gen 6, to an assembly facility, back to a Gen 6, to possibly not even that.
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 Confirms Gov. Evers’s Claim of a Renegotiation Discussion, America’s Best Know Better, and Despite Denials, Foxconn’s Empty Buildings Are Still Empty.