Wisconsin is calling off a deal it made for a Foxconn factory in 2017, saying the manufacturer has hired fewer people than it promised (via The Verge).
Wisconsin Foxconn Deal
In exchange for giving Foxconn US$3 billion in subsidies over the next few years, the company was supposed to build a factory for LCD displays as part of President Trump’s campaign platform to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.
The proposal planned a 20 million square foot campus that would employ 13,000 jobs for Wisconsinites. Foxconn then said it would be slowing its hiring rate. To receive the subsidies Foxconn had to hire at least 520 people by the end of 2019, but the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) determined only 281 would qualify under the contract terms. In 2018 it had to hire 260 employees but that didn’t happen either.
In 2019 a Foxconn representative met with Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers to renegotiate the deal: A smaller factory employing 1,500 people instead of the original 13,000.
In its letter to Foxconn, WEDC wrote:
The Recipients are ineligible for tax credits because of their failure to carry out the Project. The fact that the Recipients have neither built, nor started to build or operate, the required Generation 10.5 TFT-LCD Fabrication Facility (the “10.5 Fab”) is not in dispute. The Recipients have acknowledged that they have no formal or informal business plans to build a 10.5 Fab within the Zone, and WEDC and the State of Wisconsin have corroborated that fact from observation, evaluations, and from industry experts hired to provide consulting services.
i could see that this was a boondoggle from a mile off. It was to make the governor look good. Well, how good does he look now. This ended up EXACTLY where I thought it would.