Foxconn Mostly Abandons $10 Bln Wisconsin Project
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Foxconn mostly abandons $10 bln Wisconsin project touted by Trump:
Taiwan electronics manufacturer Foxconn is drastically scaling back a planned $10 billion factory in Wisconsin, confirming its retreat from a project that former U.S. President Donald Trump once called "the eighth wonder of the world."
Under a deal with the state of Wisconsin announced on Tuesday, Foxconn will reduce its planned investment to $672 million from $10 billion and cut the number of new jobs to 1,454 from 13,000.
[...] For Foxconn, the investment promise was an opportunity for its charismatic founder and then-chairman, Terry Gou, to build goodwill at a moment when Trump's trade policies threatened the company's cash cow: building Apple Inc's iPhones in China for export to America.
Foxconn, the world's largest contract manufacturer of electronic devices, proposed a 20-million-square-foot manufacturing campus in Wisconsin that would have been the largest investment in U.S. history for a new location by a foreign-based company.
It was supposed to build cutting-edge flat-panel display screens for TVs and other devices and instantly establish Wisconsin as a destination for tech firms.
The original Wisconsin package also included local tax incentives and road and highway investments by state and local governments, which brought total taxpayer-funded subsidies to more than $4 billion.
Foxconn noted that since 2017, it has invested $900 million in Wisconsin, including several different facilities in the state.
The state has already spent more than $200 million on road improvements, tax exemptions and grants to local governments for worker training and employment, according to the records obtained by Wisconsin Public Radio. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Yimou Lee in Taipei; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
Also at The Verge.
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