lenben Loc: Seattle

Is the Foxconn deal in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, that President Trump touted turning out to be just another con?


Then-Gov. Scott Walker, President Donald Trump, and Foxconn CEO Terry Guo used golden shovels during a groundbreaking ceremony at Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, June 27, 2018. (Only Guo seems to know how to use a shovel.) Although Walker predicted the project would “make us a brain gain state, not a brain drain state,” Foxconn could actually accelerate Wisconsin’s brain drain.


It certainly seems that way because last week Kelly Meyerhofer reported in the Wisconsin State Journal that a year after Foxconn Technology Group promised $100 million to help fund a new engineering building and company-related research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW–Madison), the university has so far received only $700,000. The original timeline for the gift was five years, so Foxconn is way behind.

According to Greta Anderson’s report yesterday in Inside Higher Ed, the August 28, 2018 agreement between UW–Madison and Foxconn is remarkably vague and already seems to be obsolete. Among other things, the agreement said:

The commitment of Foxconn to build the Wisconsin Valley Science & Technology Park — anchored by the first and only TFT-LCD fabrication plant in North America … will serve as the catalyst for extraordinary innovation and discovery and will stimulate similar economic growth.

However, it was obvious even before the agreement was signed that the advanced TFT-LCD video display plant ballyhooed in June, 2018 by President Trump and then-Gov. Scott Walker, a plant that was supposed to support 13,000 jobs, was never going to be built in Wisconsin, because Foxconn and Republicans were pulling a bait-and-switch on Wisconsin taxpayers. Once Foxconn got the tax breaks and subsidies confirmed and actually received several million dollars in advance payments from the state government, they quickly scaled back their plans to something smaller, then canceled the plant entirely, then when Trump intervened said they would be building something after all, but so far there has been nothing built, nada — Foxconn has rented some empty buildings, but has hired no one. In its latest move, on September 5 Foxconn announced plans to help make automated coffee robots instead of high-tech displays. As Nick Statt wrote in The Verge:

Foxconn will help the company [Texas-based Briggo Coffee] manufacture its units in its Wisconsin LCD factory, which doesn’t exist yet — and thus produces no LCDs, or any other product for that matter

UW–Madison said the lack of progress on that $100 million gift was due to Foxconn’s executive leadership turnover, as Foxconn’s billionaire CEO Terry Guo resigned earlier this year to run for president of Taiwan. As it happens, Guo announced yesterday that he will not run for president of Taiwan after all, so presumably UW–Madison will be on the phone to Foxconn this week asking plaintively when the pledged money will arrive.



Although Foxconn has given only a small fraction of its pledge, UW–Madison has been generous in return: a dozen or more University of Wisconsin engineering students, while being educated at some expense to the taxpayers of Wisconsin, worked as interns for Foxconn in Taiwan for three months during spring semester 2019. Meyerhofer writes that two students received permanent job offers, according to David Yu, UW–Madison’s faculty lead for the Foxconn internship. The University has spent over $3 million in improvements in anticipation of an expansion of its engineering program, but without the funds from Foxcon, the facility lies dormant.

Prof. Yu did not say whether Foxconn’s full-time job offers were in Wisconsin (where Foxconn makes nothing) or in Taiwan (where it makes plenty). However, one can easily find many dozens of job openings at Foxconn and its subsidiaries in California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and elsewhere in the US, so perhaps UW–Madison engineering students who like Foxconn but don’t want to move to Taiwan can move to California or elsewhere. UW–Madison has one of the top engineering programs in the country, and its graduates are welcome in any state in the union… So it looks like Wisconsin has spent millions and has received practically nothing.

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

Trump
Big government lobbyists and big business take big taxpayer money from locals.
Nothing to show for it but smoke, mirrors, and deflections.
No surprises here.
Scott Walker was another grifter.

jcboy3

I don't think Wisconsin will go Trumps way again.