Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

https://www.theverge.com/21507966/foxconn-empty-factories-wisconsin-jobs-loophole-trump

by rhd1729 • 6 years ago

515 230 6 years ago

But in actual reality, the project has succeeded in manufacturing mostly this: an endless supply of wonderful things for the President to promise his supporters. This past weekend, in an interview with a local Wisconsin TV station, Trump insisted Foxconn had built “one of the most incredible plants I’ve ever seen” in Mount Pleasant and would keep its promises and more if he was reelected. “They will do what I tell them to do,” he said. “If we win the election, Foxconn is going to come into our country with money like no other company has come into our country.”

IMO a fascinatingly complex story about the kinds of plays which occur at this level, and how much money it takes to keep up an empty story going. The city and state legislature acted most shamefully in denying its citizens any insight or oversight into what was happening.

willis9363• 6 years ago

I live in WI and I don’t think anyone is fooled at this point. If there is a minimum amount needed to keep a lie going until an election, they didn’t hit the target.

paxys• 6 years ago

I'd love to agree with you but the Wisconsin election results are going to prove otherwise.

rafaelm• 6 years ago

This "Reply All" podcast episode explains the history behind this pretty well: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/wbhjwd

jimsparkman• 6 years ago

As an aside, does Wisconsin even make sense from a logistical standpoint for LCDs?

t3rabytes• 6 years ago

That’s mentioned in the article — no. It was going to be cost and logisticly prohibitive to make LCDs.

Lazare3• 6 years ago

Put it this way: It's possible that you could manufacture LCDs profitably in Wisconsin...

...but nobody has ever proposed an even vaguely plausible plan to do so. Foxconn seems to have to viewed it as so obviously absurd they never even tried to develop a plan, much less started building a factory.

Whatever else you may say about Foxconn, they seem to be pretty decent at manufacturing things cheaply. If they considered the idea to be a joke, it's probably safe to assume it's utterly impractical.

hashtagmarkup• 6 years ago

The manufacturing process requires a lot of clean water. Racine built them a pipe directly to Lake Michigan to take all the fresh water they want for free. Dump the wastewater back in the farmland and you've got yourself a nearly free dystopia.

avs733• 6 years ago

My sense is that wasn't something they considered relevant to their decision making.

quasse• 6 years ago

This entire project was a shameful example of political pump-and-dump by our former governor.

He sold the more gullible elements of our state on this fairy tale about Foxconn, got lots of air time and Trump points out of it, made an abortive presidential run, and then got replaced and slunk into the shadows before the music stopped.

Now our new Governor is left cleaning up the embarrassing mess while simultaneously being blamed for its failure by the very people who made the whole thing happen.

threatofrain2• 6 years ago

The WI legislature was also committed to stopping the governor from having any oversight.

ars• 6 years ago

What does Foxconn get out of it? From the article they seem to have lost lots of money.

jcranmer• 6 years ago

If I had to guess, I would say that they thought that they'd still get the money anyways for a greatly stepped-down facility. The fact that Wisconsin is cancelling the money for Foxconn not delivering on their promises (which they probably never intended to keep in the first place) seems to have come as a surprise to Foxconn.

kristianov• 6 years ago

Terry Gou was running for president of taiwan, and he needed support and endorsement from Trump. He got it, and he still lost.

pbourke• 6 years ago

Foxconn provided a bulk quantity of unicorn farts to power the Walker and Trump administrations through tweets, photo ops, TV ads, etc. In return they were expecting the angel of tariffs to skip their door, in addition to the river of incentives money that was to be directed their way.

evan_3• 6 years ago

It says they failed to qualify for a subsidy so I assume they were planning on getting money from that.

germinalphrase• 6 years ago

I was upset about losing the high speed rail, but the Foxconn deal made me wild. It was so clearly a con job from the beginning.

SerLava3• 6 years ago

And the only reason they obsessed over killing high speed rail was that it would make southern Wisconsin slightly more attractive to young people, who would tip the voting scales.

8bitsrule• 6 years ago

Promises are easy, ask any politician.

Now it sounds a lot like what Bush left behind for Obama.

sjg0072• 6 years ago

Man I can’t wait for the Netflix movie about this. What should the title be?

willis9363• 6 years ago

Faux con?

AaronFriel2• 6 years ago

It was a real con, I think.

readams• 6 years ago

Foxconnfidence Game

xwdv• 6 years ago

Foxconned, duh.

sjg0072• 6 years ago

Nice. I was thinking Outfoxed 2.0 but I like Foxconned.

dylan604• 6 years ago

Wasn't this whole thing being dropped until a certain head of state got involved to convince the deal to continue? I would be very interested in what was offered to keep Foxconn from walking away.

unnouinceput• 6 years ago

"League of Legends" by Foxxcon

gregd• 6 years ago

Outfoxed.

wishconsinconn• 6 years ago

"Fox in the cheesehouse"?

While you wait, American Factory is a pretty good documentary about a Chinese auto glass manufacturer trying to set up a stateside plant in an area that aggressively courted them.

ashtonkem2• 6 years ago

With the minor difference being that the glass factory actually makes things.

timidiceball• 6 years ago

I thoroughly enjoyed American Factory's take! It presented many aspects of such a venture without taking too strong of a narrative one way or the other. Petty politics big and small, cultural mismatch, the rich getting richer, union busting. But also the very real attempts at bridging the culture gap and the stories of some imported foreigner workers who develop a serious fondness for life in America.

pm• 6 years ago

Fox "con" surely.

maxerickson3• 6 years ago

Scott Walker and the $3,000,0000,000 Sheet of Paper.

https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/handwri...

_5659• 6 years ago

"The Last Graveyard"

Hopefully they incorporate poetry by Xu Lizhi: https://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-poetry

kenned3• 6 years ago

This is a great article around why "corporate welfare" rarely works out. Also, semes like a textbook example of "eminent domain" abuse?

We call this "expropriation" in Canada and it is rarely abused like this.

Taking peoples property to give it to a private corporation? I can understand the need to take property for public use (roads, infra) but the US needs to end eminent domain abuse. If Foxconn needed the property, go to the landowners and buy it, dont go to the gvt and claim 'road widening' to kick them off.

justchilly• 6 years ago

This is a great article around why "corporate welfare" rarely works out.

Any data to back this up? It's generally accepted that subsidies are effective in many cases (see corona virus stimulus packages).

This Foxconn deal was poorly thought out and horribly mismanaged, but it doesn't sound like Foxconn lined their pockets with taxpayer money. The subsidies encouraged them to take a chance, and it didn't work out - spectacularly.

tootie3• 6 years ago

Corporate subsidies work very well in certain conditions. The biggest is in investing in industries have big long-term potential but huge upfront costs. Power generation is a good example. Subsidies also tend to work best with a portfolio like a VC fund.

The other option is for a very mature industries with inelastic demand where subsidies go directly to pushing down prices. Like with food and fuel.

sudosysgen2• 6 years ago

In general, for such industries where corporate subsidies are really really worth it, a well run SoE will do the job with less risk.

For examples in power generation, EDF and HydroQuebec are cases where the government, instead of directly or indirectly subsidizing power generation, decided to just run it themselves, and they both have very clean (80% carbon free for EDF, 99.9% for HydroQuebec), and both make a solid profit while selling the electricty at very low costs (for HydroQuebec, the lowest unsubsidized cost in the world, full stop).

maxerickson3• 6 years ago

Isn't Foxconn all short to medium term potential with sort of middle of the road upfront costs?

Their upfront costs are probably nominally higher than average, but state of the art manufacturing moves fast, the up front costs are either paid back quickly or a waste.

The same forces limit the long term potential; if they don't keep up, the investment quickly withers.

pg_bot3• 6 years ago

You can blame the worst supreme court decision in the 21st century for that. (Kelo v City of New London)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

gruez3• 6 years ago

worst? what about citizens united? how often is eminent domain abused for economic development, compared to how much favorable legislation was passed for corporations?

layoutIfNeeded• 6 years ago

After the Court's decision, the city allowed a private developer to proceed with its plans; however, the developer was unable to obtain financing and abandoned the project, and the contested land remained an undeveloped empty lot in 2019.

Wait, so did the original owner get back their property then?

leto_ii• 6 years ago

If I'm reading this correctly (I'm not familiar with US jurisprudence etc.), the decision allows the state to expropriate private entities for the benefit of other private entities. How is it that the liberal judges were not able to foresee this decision's consequences?

delusional• 6 years ago

Even if the local politicians are allowed to do it, do they have to?

Sure, it would have been nice if the supreme court had stopped it, but it's a deeply broken system that even requires the supreme court to decide it. Political decisions like this NEED political consequences.

hengheng• 6 years ago

This is a good example of how the craving for superlatives does not only generate a lot of empty hyperbole, but also how it can derail an entire thread.

Accujack2• 6 years ago

It's not just eminent domain abuse, either... part of the Foxconn deal was set to bypass the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact and use water from Lake Michigan for LCD manufacturing.

The City of Racine basically argued that they could take the water for "public use" because they were allowed to do so (cities source drinking water from the lakes) and give up to 7 million gallons a day to Foxconn via a pipe.

Wisconsin environmental oversight signed off on this, but the plant hasn't happened so it hasn't been tested in court. Hopefully the Compact will be strengthened to prevent potential abuses like this in the future.

ineedasername4• 6 years ago

Yes, these sorts of "tax incentives" are a negative sum game. As long as they are done, companies will hop around to the best deals, depleting the tax base as they force more and more competition from struggling jurisdictions, forcing local citizens to foot the bill for more and more of the infrastructure and services that make those businesses possible.

cratermoon• 6 years ago

NY Times covered it well 8 years ago https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/us/how-local-taxpayers-ba...

MisterBastahrd2• 6 years ago

I think I read somewhere that Louisiana loses about 20% of its local municipal revenue per year due to corporate welfare and tax breaks.

rjmunro• 6 years ago

That's an unfair way to say it. You could equally say "Louisiana spends about 20% of its local municipal revenue supporting local businesses."

I have no idea if that is a big number or how it compares to other states. I also have no idea if it's a good investment - perhaps it results in lots of jobs and ultimately more than 20% increase in tax take (you should also factor in if it's just pulling jobs and therefore taxes from elsewhere, rather than creating new value).

But the money is no more "lost" than it would be if they spent it on schools or roads or whatever else.

est• 6 years ago

Would be funny to see the same article about TSMC be posted 3 years later.

teruakohatu• 6 years ago

I am not an American, but it is not hard for me to see the benefits of local chip manufacturer, for the same reason China is wanting chips made locally even if they cost more and require government subsidy.

schemescape• 6 years ago

Woo said these researchers would be developing Foxconn’s “AI 8K+5G ecosystem,” something that, other than being a list of different technologies, has never been coherently explained.

And we’re supposed to be surprised this didn’t work out? :)

silexia• 6 years ago

In a best-case scenario, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau found the state wouldn’t break even until 2043. Depending on how many people Foxconn hired, each job would cost taxpayers somewhere between $200,000 and more than a million dollars. The average subsidy in the US is around $24,000 per job.

-Shouldn't we simply ban these special tax breaks and credits and cash payments altogether? Isn't that what the free market is supposed to be about?

person_of_color• 6 years ago

Amazing corporate power play by Foxconn. Congrats. The fact that they do it around the world with little repercussions is amazing.

Jon_Lowtek4• 6 years ago

The other initiative, called Foxconn Future Leaders, targeted recent college graduates
Employees ..., no matter what role they had been hired for, were told to figure out what Foxconn should do in Wisconsin themselves.
The new management seemed increasingly open in its disdain for the local workforce. “Why are Americans paid so much and do so little? I can’t tell you how many times we heard that,” said one employee. “It was certainly a toxic work environment”
the office began to fill with people who had nothing to do. Many just sat in their cubicles watching Netflix and playing games on their phones

Well its obvious: politic and corporate are at fault: should have hired at least some people who actually know what the job is they got hired for, not just slackers and slavers. This is far too typical for large corporations: no real plan, hire cheap, have n-layers of management where everyone pretends everything is going well, but since no one has any clue the whole thing grinds to a halt, fails and burns once the initial inertia runs out.

jariel5• 6 years ago

This is not what happened clearly.

Foxconn didn't know what to do with the facility at all and had no material plans, it was like expansion without a cause. The hiring had no purpose other than to probably break even on the subsidies, which I don't think they met profits from, so it was a big debacle from start to end.

The 'problem' was Foxconn didn't have a business plan for the facility.

The 'subsidies' meant that it took way too long to fail.

Jon_Lowtek4• 6 years ago

It is easy to say "they just hired to fill a quota" when the only person who seems to do any actual work is the person hiring to fill their quota.

imtringued2• 6 years ago

There was no goal other than to get some subsidies and handshakes with Trump. Anyone who was hired was there to game some arbitrary hiring quota.

nendroid6• 6 years ago

Well you can't ignore the reality of the situation. It's one thing for american blue collar workers to get paid more.

It's another thing for blue collar american workers to get paid more and be 10x slower and worse at getting things done.

orange_joe• 6 years ago

lol, did you even read the article? the situation had absolutely nothing to do with the pay of American workers and everything to do with the fact that Foxconn management went into this situation without a plan, and the situation was exacerbated by their almost feudalistic management structure.

nendroid6• 6 years ago

Everyone knows American workers are way worse than chinese blue collar workers. This is a well known fact among factory owners in China.

Foxconn is not stupid, they've done such a thing before when migrating manufacturing to China. If American workers were good they'd take this project seriously too. They aren't, and the screw ups are just a result of certain executives not taking the project seriously and not providing enough resources to lower management.

This project was done for optics. It has an ulterior motive because it's not logical to hire workers in America when you can get better workers in China.

jarboot• 6 years ago

Does anyone in the bay area have experience working with Foxconn?

komali25• 6 years ago

We tried to set up internships with them through AIESEC once. They were super gung ho about it, it was like a bolt of lightning struck this dude (some sort of engineering manager in houston) when I was telling him about the program when he visited our campus. We had, like, three or four meetings, setting up for something crazy like fifty interns (AIESEC is a non profit that sets up local internships for international students) was on the table. We even had created the job descriptions and put them on our little internal internship board. Then they simply stopped returning our calls. Never found out what happened.

jariel5• 6 years ago

This is very good information, but the wrong narrative.

This was not some 'fake deal' by a Chinese firm to get subsidies, it looks like they probably barely broke even on this one - if that - and no company wants to have big ugly stain failures like this.

It looks like Foxconn just bit off more than they could chew, maybe saw an opportunity, but then realized they couldn't make use of the plant. They knew what the thresholds were, could barely meet them, it had no business objective there.

Foxconn didn't win from this and so the narrative should be about states making more careful deals for payouts with companies.

Even good companies make stupid ventures here and there - the bigger the company, the more inane it looks. The huge problem here of course is the public dime. The Governor should be destroyed over this.

dlp211• 6 years ago

The governor responsible isn't in office anymore.

galimaufry• 6 years ago

Agreed that Foxconn doesn't sound malicious here. But it does seem like more than typical bumbling.

In particular, I can't see how this management structure is supposed to work - competing subdivisions is fine, and having divisions just do what the CEO says seems like it could work, but combining them is wild.

jariel5• 6 years ago

There is probably something to the story here, because superficially it doesn't look like Foxconn benefited from this, so why did they do it?

The journo tried to paint this as some kind of 'big fraud by FoxConn' but that's clearly not it, a big part of the story was missed.

Often, sometimes corporations just make mistakes and have units that are poorly managed, we just usually don't get to witness their failures publicly.

komali25• 6 years ago

Foxconn is Taiwanese, not Chinese.

someperson• 6 years ago

True, but Foxconn and Terry Gou have a very tight knit relationship to China and its ruling party

latchkey• 6 years ago

This keeps coming up over the years...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19037625

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21350837

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19099923

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22850723

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21784924

gilgoomesh• 6 years ago

Perhaps it's necessary to repeat some things. The only commenter on your third link still seems convinced the negative press is not true.

pimlottc2• 6 years ago

Those are previous pieces on an ongoing situation. This is a new article just published with updates on the current situation.

fortran772• 6 years ago

The fact that local governments in every state make deals with companies for reduced property-tax rates is why I'm terrified about Prop 15 killing California.

The big businesses, Facebook, Google, Apple, will all negotiate special property tax rates and only the small businesses will have to pay the double or triple tax prop 15 would bring.

jeffbee3• 6 years ago

This is a very incorrect view of property taxation in silicon valley. Google and Apple are not going to be harmed in the least, because Google and Apple already pay a disproportionate amount of real property taxes in Santa Clara County. If Prop 15 makes legacy businesses pay a fair assessment on their parcels, relative newcomers like Google will be helped, not harmed. Google is Santa Clara County's largest taxpayer, paying $65 million in secured property taxes last year. If older large companies like Intel begin to pay realistic assessments, it won't be so skewed.

8note3• 6 years ago

This sounds like you're in agreement. The big companies will benefit, at the expense of the small companies

fortran772• 6 years ago

That's exactly what I said. Big companies that will build a campus the city wants will get special treatment. The small machine shop that buys a quanset hut for $4,000,000 in mountain view will be taxed to death.

redis_mlc• 6 years ago

Just for those who don't understand the business side of this.

Chinese mfgs. don't and won't make anything in the USA except in remarkable circumstances. There's many reasons, but supply chain, labor force, eco, and costs are the main ones.

What's funny is when a Chinese businesperson is doing an interview in the US, and they're asked, "how many jobs are you creating in the US?" Cue the stammering, since they were expecting a puff piece about non-business questions.

They do launder money using US and Canadian real estate for a "rainy day" - like when the CCP decides to arrest them and their family members. That's what all those empty, dark condos in Vancouver are for.

shalmanese• 6 years ago

You might want to look up who owns Foxconn and what nationality the company is.

quantaum_dot• 6 years ago

Foundamently it came down to the reality that it is not profitable to build a factory and manufacture lcd in Wisconsin. Probably in none of the US states.

predictmktegirl• 6 years ago

The story was certainly interesting, but the lack of conciseness was brutal.

danschumann• 6 years ago

Alarming if true. Seems to me, being someone from Wisconsin, that Evers coming in and them pulling out are pretty coincidentally timed. It's almost is if he drove them out, but that can't be true because someone wrote this article that so caringly fears it's worse than that! Egad, it makes one wonder what to believe!

By the way how does this article interest hackers/tinkerers in any way? Answer without bias.

paulie_a• 6 years ago

The plan was stupid from the get go. It was never going to work and was simply a give away at the expense of the tax payers. I'm from Wisconsin also and can confirm those buildings are not creating any jobs.

It was obviously stupid and controversial at the beginning and this was going to be the obvious conclusion.

jhanschoo• 6 years ago

Following a link from the article, I'm surprised that someone with the post of Director of US Strategic Initiatives at Foxconn would have such an unprofessional twitter account https://twitter.com/alansyeung

khuey• 6 years ago

When you realize this was all a political scam to make the Republican (ex-)governor of Wisconsin look good it makes perfect sense.

xivzgrev• 6 years ago

Anyone know what was in it for Terry from the start? It sounded like access and favor from Trump, but the trade war still happened and he’s still saying there’s going to be a LCD factory to this day.

ktta• 6 years ago

Foxconn stayed out of the cross-hairs, unlike Huawei, ZTE, SMIC, etc. Honestly they should've been since they are a prime facilitator of outsourcing of high margin manufacturing. Pretty much any major computing giant you think of gets their stuff made by Foxconn.

I'd argue that a _real_ trade-war didn't happen. If it did, color me underwhelmed[1]. We got some tariffs put on Chinese goods, China started buying Brazilian soybean instead of American. To put an end to this, a deal was struck were China buys much more agricultural products, which has been going poorly[2]. Sure, there was some economic damage, but I don't think this can be classified as a 'trade war'. Unfortunately (or fortunately), a proper definition doesn't exist in terms of a financial impact threshold.

One angle that I don't think anyone has discussed. Terry Gou is running for Presidency in Taiwan, and this could be a way to show him rubbing shoulders with international leaders. The US is big ally to Taiwan, and who better to be in the good graces of than the President of the US?

Apart from the above discussed angle, I think my comment from Jan 2019 is still relevant[3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...

[2] https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/us-china-phase-one...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19018486

rsynnott3• 6 years ago

Terry Gou is running for Presidency in Taiwan, and this could be a way to show him rubbing shoulders with international leaders.

Was running; he lost fairly decisively.

manbilla• 6 years ago

Foxconn did this in India too. They use investments and manufacturing as a carrot to negotiate better subsidies and low taxes. https://wccftech.com/apple-foxconn-india-plant-abandon/

throwawaysea• 6 years ago

Were any subsidies actually paid? My understanding is that Foxconn was ultimately not eligible for any actual credits given how their plans had changed: https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/state-t...

And if that's true then didn't the state subsidy system work exactly as intended?

NY's Amazon subsidies were designed very well. They provided tax credits for the incremental progress Amazon made on the terms of the subsidy. So the state was not paying up front and then at risk of being left in the red if Amazon were to change plans. It's up to the government to design an airtight subsidy structure that protects their interests - but it can be done.

bilbo0s3• 6 years ago

We're down about 1 billion at the moment. A $750 million dollar loan that the people of Mt Pleasant took out for "improvements". In addition to about two or three hundred million spent on things like highway construction, wastewater infrastructure, stuff like that. My own hope is that we walk away from the table. You have to know when to fold a bad hand.

Oh, I forgot the best part. Even though the people of Mt Pleasant unilaterally decided to take out the loan for 3/4 of a billion dollars, the now former governor Scott Walker guaranteed that taxpayers from the rest of the state would pay the loan off. So Mt Pleasant got 3/4 of a billion in what is effectively free money, because people in Green Bay and Superior are obliged to pay it back, not them.

We got a new governor, but he's been prevented from unwinding the loan guarantee by the state legislature that stripped the governorship of pretty much all powers before he could take office.

The corruption in Wisconsin runs deep. We can't catch a break up here. So remember, no matter how bad you think things are in Florida, or Texas, or New Jersey with respect to corruption, you could always be worse off. You could live in Wisconsin.

ashtonkem2• 6 years ago

Did any voters actually fall for this? It seemed laughably fraudulent to me at the time, and it's not clear to me if the con worked or if politicians are so non-responsive to the voters that it didn't really matter if anyone was actually fooled.

SerLava3• 6 years ago

It was mostly Republicans, and yes they fell for it hard.

Osiris2• 6 years ago

The governor lost the election very shortly after announcing this. I think that's evidence to show that most people did not think it was a good idea.

itronitron• 6 years ago

seems like they could have at least considered bitcoin mining and negotiated for subsidized energy contracts

originalvichy• 6 years ago

This was a nice absurdist short story that gave me a peek into the life of giant corporations with idiotic management. This is what happens with zero accountability.

Animats• 6 years ago

Tesla did something similar in Buffalo, NY.[1]

[1] https://buffalonews.com/business/local/teslas-buffalo-plant-...

Osiris2• 6 years ago

In the base case scenario the state would break even in 2042.

The government ended up paying over $200k for each job created.

It sickens me what people will do to push their own little kingdom of power. This guy wanted to get reelected so he was willing to give away $3 billion of people's hard earned money and screw up hundreds of people's lives (all the students and others that were hired, left better jobs, then got fired).

throwaway0a5e2• 6 years ago

When you put it that way it doesn't actually sound that abnormal or out of line for state politics.

States in the Boston-DC corridor are rife with bullshit state police task forces that mostly just collect paychecks, government departments staffed with cronies, etc. etc. They spin up programs that do things and then shut them down and leave people and businesses hanging with similar results to all the people this left hanging.

Boondoggles are universal. I really don't see how laundering it through the mechanism of corporate welfare makes it any better or worse than any other boondoggle. It's just a different way of doing things so that the boondoggle can be marketed to a different political demographic.

bilbo0s3• 6 years ago

The Boston-DC corridor is extraordinarily wealthy. Wisconsin is now the poorest state in the upper midwest. No one told our corrupt politicians that yes you can do boondoggles, but you shouldn't do rich man boondoggles. We're not rich, and we tried to play like a big shot state, and sit at the high stakes table. Well, now the bill is becoming clear, we're out about $1 billion so far, and people are starting to complain. The time to complain was when we first saw, now ex-, governor Walker go sit down at the big shot table. We should have snatched him back right at that point. We let him make a horrible deal, rife with corrupt payouts to his cronies, on our behalf. That was dumb of us.

It's a lesson for other poor states. If you're poor, you're probably corrupt, but come Hell or high water, you cannot allow your corrupt politicians to get you in too deep. It's your taxes that will end up paying both the bills they incur, as well as the pensions they get when they leave office.

credit_guy• 6 years ago

I see a lot of popular outrage here, and I love me some popular outrage against the big bad boy just like everyone else, but still, what was Foxconn's gain here? The billions in subsidies were in the form of tax relief, they will not see a dime if they don't build the factory. The bulldozed houses in Wisconsin, while a loss for the state, don't make Foxconn any richer. In the end, the only thing Foxconn achieved was some horrible PR in the US.

matwood• 6 years ago

At the risk of getting too political, the gain was getting Trump off their back. Apple did something similar in TX [1]. Give Trump a photo op (which everyone knows he loves), and then don't actually do anything. Trump moves on, and the business can continue as before.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/20/20974999/trump-is-lying-...

spamizbad• 6 years ago

I guess we'll see if this hurt Trump in 2 weeks, but wasn't this thing part of why Scott Walker lost his reelection in 2018?

bilbo0s3• 6 years ago

The gain was mostly in the form of payouts to Scott Walker's political cronies. I'll give you one guess which companies the hundreds of millions in highway and infrastructure "improvements" contracts went to. (Also, why did we even need to do those "improvements"?) Don't even get me started on the 3/4 of a billion dollar loan that the small suburb of Mt Pleasant took out. Which wouldn't be a problem, in a non-corrupt world, Mt Pleasant would have taken out a loan, and Mt Pleasant would have to pay it back. But in Wisconsin, Scott Walker, to help out his buddies down there, made a guarantee that tax payers everywhere except Mt Pleasant would have to pay back the loan. So now people in Dalton, Fox Lake, and Eau Claire have to pay the loan that people in Mt Pleasant unilaterally took out.

We can't even unwind that guarantee so that the people of Mt Pleasant have to pay their own bills. Because when we kicked Scott Walker out, his buddies in the legislature stripped the new governor we voted in of any power to unwind said deal before he could take office. Corruption in Wisconsin runs deep my friend.

So believe me, there was "gain" by corrupt parties all over the state. Just because Foxconn only breaks even, doesn't mean no one made money. It only means Foxconn won't lose money. The losers are all the taxpayers of Wisconsin, except for those taxpayers favored by Scott Walker.

Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

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