Delayed, not saved: Foxconn's Wisconsin "factory" announcement is a bid to help Trump save face

After announcing that, inevitably, it wasn't going to build an LCD factory in Wisconsin, and would instead use its $4.1 billion subsidy to build a modest R&D facility employing out-of-state skilled workers; Foxconn reversed itself and promised that the factory was back on.

The factory is not back on.

LCDs are pure commodities, among the lowest-margin components, and about to be made obsolete by OLEDs. There is zero business-case for building these outside of Asia-Pacific. It was a stunt, it was always a stunt, just like it was a stunt all the other times they did it.

The reason for the announcement is that Donald Trump called them up and asked them to announce that the factory would be built. Donald Trump will be president for two or fewer years, during which time Foxconn can dither and dick around and do very little, and then they can announce that the factory is off. This news will be welcomed by Trump's successor, from either party, as a way to further discredit him.

This is obvious to anyone except desperate cognitive-dissonance types wanting more than anything to believe that their white supremacist in the White House is an infallible god-king of negotiations.

I mean, obviously.

Wisconsin promised nearly $4 billion in state and local tax incentives to Foxconn if it invested $10 billion and created 13,000 jobs for the project, which Trump heralded last year as the "eighth wonder of the world."

But Foxconn's repeated changes to its plans led critics of the project this week to accuse Foxconn of a "bait and switch."

Foxconn says it will build Wisconsin factory after all, citing conversation with Trump [CBS]