Friday, January 15, 2021

The Foxconn Con Was Always a Scam

 It’s obvious by now everyone in Wisconsin was played for fools by former Gov. Scott Walker and soon-to-be-former President Trump, known for wildly exaggerated promises about job creation, after they teamed up with Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou, a billionaire Taiwanese businessman notorious for repeatedly breaking the same fraudulent promises about creating tens of thousands of jobs all over the world.

Those three launched a blinding blizzard of fabrications in the summer of 2017. Gou, whose company produces IPhones and LCD screens for large-screen TVs and computers for U.S. companies in China, was currying favor with Trump to avoid damage in Trump’s trade war with China. Gou offered to build the first high-tech LCD screen production factory in the U.S. Trump couldn’t wait to boast about attracting Chinese manufacturing jobs to the U.S. 

With Walker facing re-election in 2018, Gou and Trump found someone ripe for picking. In November 2017, Wisconsin signed a contract offering an astronomical $3 billion in direct payments to Foxconn, the largest taxpayer jobs subsidy in U.S. history. With other costs for Wisconsin and Mount Pleasant, the total bill exceeded $4 billion. Foxconn had to hire a minimum of 5,200 workers by the end of 2022 to qualify for subsidies with vague promises employment could grow “up to 13,000.” Or not. Depending on hiring, the absurd cost could range from $200,000 to a million dollars per job. In the best-case scenario, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau said taxpayers wouldn’t break even until 2043.

Many people in Wisconsin already know much of that. They’re also aware little has happened in three years except construction of a few buildings and an enormous glass globe with no apparent function. But here’s something the public hasn’t been told yet. The Foxconn project was a total scam from the start. Now the company denies it ever promised to build an LCD factory in Wisconsin. 

Read more: https://shepherdexpress.com/news/taking-liberties/the-foxconn-con-was-always-a-scam/#/questions/


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