Wisconsin blames Foxconn, says $3 billion factory deal is off

Enlarge / Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Donald Trump, Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou, and former House Speaker Paul Ryan participate in a groundbreaking for a Foxconn facility in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin in 2018. Foxconn has hired significantly fewer people than it claimed it would do at the time of the company's 2017 development deal with the state. (credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

The state of Wisconsin was supposed to provide Foxconn with $3 billion in subsidies over the next few years to support the construction of a massive LCD display factory in the state. The deal was negotiated in 2017 by Gov. Scott Walker and announced by Donald Trump at a White House event. It was part of Trump's strategy to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States.

In a Monday letter, the state informed Foxconn that the company wouldn't get the first installment of the $3 billion because Foxconn wasn't holding up its end of the deal. Under Foxconn's 2017 agreement with the state, Foxconn would be eligible for the first round of subsidies if it hired at least 520 full-time employees to work on the LCD panel factory by the end of 2019. Foxconn claimed that it had cleared this bar by hiring 550 employees in the state. But Wisconsin found that Foxconn had only 281 employees who counted toward the requirement.

Foxconn was supposed to spend $3.3 billion on the project by the end of 2019. Instead, Foxconn had only spent around $300 million by the end of the year.

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