This "Reply All" podcast episode explains the history behind this pretty well: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/wbhjwd
> 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? :)
> 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).
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/
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
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.
As an aside, does Wisconsin even make sense from a logistical standpoint for LCDs?
Man I can’t wait for the Netflix movie about this. What should the title be?
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
Tesla did something similar in Buffalo, NY.[1]
[1] https://buffalonews.com/business/local/teslas-buffalo-plant-...
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.
Would be funny to see the same article about TSMC be posted 3 years later.
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.
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.
Does anyone in the bay area have experience working with Foxconn?
seems like they could have at least considered bitcoin mining and negotiated for subsidized energy contracts
The story was certainly interesting, but the lack of conciseness was brutal.
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.
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.
Amazing corporate power play by Foxconn. Congrats. The fact that they do it around the world with little repercussions is amazing.
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.
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.
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.