Foxconn's Wisconsin factory starting production in May 2020 with just 1,500 jobs

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Foxconn will launch its controversial Wisconsin factory in May 2020, Governor Tony Evers said this week, but the display and network hardware facility will only start up with 1,500 jobs.

President Trump touring a Wisconsin Foxconn facility in June 2018. | Image Credit: Brendan Smailowski/AFP/Getty Images
President Trump touring a Wisconsin Foxconn facility in June 2018. | Image Credit: Brendan Smailowski/AFP/Getty Images


That will leave it 300 jobs short of the 1,820 it needs by the end of 2020 to secure $270 million more tax credits out of a total $4 billion in incentives, CNBC said. The company missed a 2018 deadline by hiring a mere 156 people in the state instead of 260, and it's not yet known if it will reach the 520 people demanded in 2019 in exchange for $222 million.

It has until 2032 to reach 13,000 workers in total, a level promised when chairman Terry Gou and U.S. President Donald Trump broke ground on the factory in June 2018. At the time, Scott Walker was state Governor.

Foxconn has radically altered its plans over time. While it was one point offering an LCD factory measuring 20 million square feet, it's instead working on a complex one-twentieth the size. Instead of making 65-inch TV panels it will instead produce smaller LCDs, as well as assemble servers and other networking hardware.

An April expose showed that much of the company's presence in Wisconsin consisted of empty buildings, or even ones still occupied by other tenants. The lack of progress has created a major political issue in Wisconsin.

Foxconn is Apple's primary assembly partner, churning out iPhones and other devices, mostly out of Chinese plants. At one point it was rumored that the Wisconsin factory might help supply Apple, but that appears unlikely.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 33
    georgie01georgie01 Posts: 436member
    Sometimes things don’t work out as planned. As long as they’re serious about it then give them time to make it happen. 
    cornchiptoddzrx
  • Reply 2 of 33
    rcfarcfa Posts: 1,124member
    Just work on WTO rules that declare any sort of deals like this illegal government subsidies. Period.

    There’s no need for corporate welfare payments like these. Let companies set up shop where it makes economic sense for them without distorting the market with tax-payer funded subsidies.

    It’s amazing that those decrying socialism the loudest are the same people enthusiastically dishing out handouts to corporations.

    Time to stop the insanity, then there’s no need for such controversies. 

    Companies set up shop where it makes sense for them, and people go where the jobs are, and if they don’t want to leave they will have to accept lower pay, which in turn may attract jobs. That’s how markets are supposed to work.
    gatorguycaladanianStrangeDaysdhawkins541fastasleep1STnTENDERBITSbaconstangFileMakerFellermuthuk_vanalingamchasm
  • Reply 3 of 33
    gutengelgutengel Posts: 363member
    I see another article in a couple months saying that the number of employees will be reduced again. Phoney politics empty promises.  
    ronnbaconstangCarnage
  • Reply 4 of 33
    I did a search for the word ‘boondoggle’ and the top hit lead me to this article...
    /a
    1STnTENDERBITSbaconstang
  • Reply 5 of 33
    apple ][apple ][ Posts: 9,233member
    These are long term plans going all the way until 2032 according to the article.

    We'll see what happens.

    And to start, 1,500 jobs is not bad, though I bet that TDS sufferers would be much more happy with zero.
    bigtds
  • Reply 6 of 33
    1st1st Posts: 443member
    1499+1 exPOTUS in 2020?
  • Reply 7 of 33
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,328member
    Maybe Apple will get them to build a new Mac Mini in the shape and color of a cheese wedge.
  • Reply 8 of 33
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member
    apple ][ said:
    These are long term plans going all the way until 2032 according to the article.

    We'll see what happens.

    And to start, 1,500 jobs is not bad, though I bet that TDS sufferers would be much more happy with zero.
    I’d be happy if they weren’t funded with corporate welfare, handouts for the executive class. 
    dhawkins541baconstangCarnagedaven
  • Reply 9 of 33
    fastasleepfastasleep Posts: 6,408member
    rcfa said:

    It’s amazing that those decrying socialism the loudest are the same people enthusiastically dishing out handouts to corporations.
    So much this.
    genovelle1STnTENDERBITSbaconstangchasmCarnagespace2001daven
  • Reply 10 of 33
    macxpressmacxpress Posts: 5,801member
    Another Trump FLOP! 
    genovellebaconstang
  • Reply 11 of 33
    radarthekatradarthekat Posts: 3,842moderator
    Everyone read Steve Jobs’ comment correctly when he said those jobs aren’t coming back, yes?  We all knew he wasn’t saying manufacturing would never come back.  I mean, it’s not like the man wasn’t far more prescient than needed to comprehend a robotic manufacturing future.  
  • Reply 12 of 33
    toddzrxtoddzrx Posts: 254member
    rcfa said:
    Just work on WTO rules that declare any sort of deals like this illegal government subsidies. Period.

    There’s no need for corporate welfare payments like these. Let companies set up shop where it makes economic sense for them without distorting the market with tax-payer funded subsidies.

    It’s amazing that those decrying socialism the loudest are the same people enthusiastically dishing out handouts to corporations.

    Time to stop the insanity, then there’s no need for such controversies. 

    Companies set up shop where it makes sense for them, and people go where the jobs are, and if they don’t want to leave they will have to accept lower pay, which in turn may attract jobs. That’s how markets are supposed to work.
    That's not the real world dude; never has been and never will be.
    rcfa said:

    It’s amazing that those decrying socialism the loudest are the same people enthusiastically dishing out handouts to corporations.
    So much this.
    Not so much this.  The statement makes no sense.  Think about it.
  • Reply 13 of 33
    anton zuykovanton zuykov Posts: 1,056member
    rcfa said:

    It’s amazing that those decrying socialism the loudest are the same people enthusiastically dishing out handouts to corporations.
    So much this.
    What is really amazing is that some NPSc do not understand that a tax cut is not a handout. 
    Let me clarify it: 
    HANDOUT - is when you do not own the money, that someone else generated, yet you ended up getting the money (for some obscure reason), despite having NO connection to the chain of a producer <----> a consumer .
    TAX CUT - is when you actually made those money as a person/company by generating value, and then the gov-t allows you to KEEP MORE of your earned money, by taxing your income to a lesser extent.
    Do you understand the difference?
    edited July 2019 bigtds
  • Reply 14 of 33
    dewme said:
    Maybe Apple will get them to build a new Mac Mini in the shape and color of a cheese wedge.

    Why?
  • Reply 15 of 33
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,273member
    To be fair, this actually has little or nothing to do with the president -- he merely grandstanded on an existing (bad) deal from then-Governor Scott Walker to score nearly-meaningless political points. Walker is the real culprit here -- he loved spending OPM on bad deals, his tenure was littered with them.

    The truth of the matter is that Foxconn has seriously underperformed and obviously had no real plan in place for their original claims. Those who say "wait and see" aren't the ones who have had to sink enormous amounts of debt into infrastructure for the plant that won't now need that infrastructure. They aren't the ones who are going to be affected by the fact that Foxconn is extremely unlikely to ever hire much more than the missed-deadline four-digit number of workers they will hire a year late into their "plan."

    If Foxconn didn't have certainty that they could live up to the targets, they shouldn't have signed the contract, and -- as others have said -- this is pure corporate welfare for a company that has plenty of money to build a plant literally anywhere without government assistance, so why did they get any in the first place? The reality is that Wisconsin will lose millions if not billions on this failed deal, and whatever Foxconn finally puts in place there will be the absolute bare minimum needed to get whatever tax incentives they can.
  • Reply 16 of 33
    CarnageCarnage Posts: 91member

    If you want a good laugh just look for Nilay Patel's posts on Twitter yesterday. After many inquiries about the meaning of AI / 8K / 5G, which are supposed to be the focus or part of facility's name, they finally answered. Just read their letter, you can't make this stuff up.

    They even asked him to leave them alone :)  

  • Reply 17 of 33
    ne1ne1 Posts: 69member
    rcfa said:
    Just work on WTO rules that declare any sort of deals like this illegal government subsidies. Period.

    There’s no need for corporate welfare payments like these. Let companies set up shop where it makes economic sense for them without distorting the market with tax-payer funded subsidies.

    It’s amazing that those decrying socialism the loudest are the same people enthusiastically dishing out handouts to corporations.

    Time to stop the insanity, then there’s no need for such controversies. 

    Companies set up shop where it makes sense for them, and people go where the jobs are, and if they don’t want to leave they will have to accept lower pay, which in turn may attract jobs. That’s how markets are supposed to work.
    Brilliant! Great thinking. Then we would certainly never be able to compete with other countries that subsidize their industries, which I suspect is most of them.

    WTO rules of this nature would never be implemented in any case because China, whose entire economy is built on government investment and subsidization of industry, would never allow it. 

    If you you really want to stop the insanity, stop tax-payer subsidized sports stadiums. 
  • Reply 18 of 33
     I don’t get it. In exchange for 13,000 jobs, Foxconn is receiving $307,692 in tax credits for each person. Since there’s no way those people will be generating that kind of income, how does this make sense? How does this help the local or state economy in any way? These employees will take many years at a decent salary just to make that much of money, and this assumes that every cent earned by each employee gets reinvested directly into the local economy so as to subsidize this deal? No wonder the locals were so pissed off that their homes were stolen by the local government and given to Foxconn just so they’d bring in skilled labor from beyond the local communities. This is just nuts. Those poor people were so screwed. 
  • Reply 19 of 33
    fastasleepfastasleep Posts: 6,408member
    toddzrx said:
    rcfa said:

    It’s amazing that those decrying socialism the loudest are the same people enthusiastically dishing out handouts to corporations.
    So much this.
    Not so much this.  The statement makes no sense.  Think about it.
    Compelling argument.

    rcfa said:

    It’s amazing that those decrying socialism the loudest are the same people enthusiastically dishing out handouts to corporations.
    So much this.
    What is really amazing is that some NPSc do not understand that a tax cut is not a handout. 
    Let me clarify it: 
    HANDOUT - is when you do not own the money, that someone else generated, yet you ended up getting the money (for some obscure reason), despite having NO connection to the chain of a producer <----> a consumer .
    TAX CUT - is when you actually made those money as a person/company by generating value, and then the gov-t allows you to KEEP MORE of your earned money, by taxing your income to a lesser extent.
    Do you understand the difference?
    It's not just tax cuts, but billions in subsidies aren't handouts? Okay, great, thanks for the etymology lesson — but what's your fucking point?

    The people decrying socialism are mad about what they perceive to be handouts, whether it's tax breaks or other subsidies. This isn't any different, except it's being applied to a fucking profitable international mega-corporation that absolutely 100% does not need these subsidies, whereas we have people in our country working full time and struggling to stay above water. Foxconn should pay every cent for what they need to set up shop in that state. It's bullshit.
  • Reply 20 of 33
    anton zuykovanton zuykov Posts: 1,056member
    toddzrx said:
    rcfa said:

    It’s amazing that those decrying socialism the loudest are the same people enthusiastically dishing out handouts to corporations.
    So much this.
    Not so much this.  The statement makes no sense.  Think about it.
    Compelling argument.

    rcfa said:

    It’s amazing that those decrying socialism the loudest are the same people enthusiastically dishing out handouts to corporations.
    So much this.
    What is really amazing is that some NPSc do not understand that a tax cut is not a handout. 
    Let me clarify it: 
    HANDOUT - is when you do not own the money, that someone else generated, yet you ended up getting the money (for some obscure reason), despite having NO connection to the chain of a producer <----> a consumer .
    TAX CUT - is when you actually made those money as a person/company by generating value, and then the gov-t allows you to KEEP MORE of your earned money, by taxing your income to a lesser extent.
    Do you understand the difference?
    It's not just tax cuts, but billions in subsidies aren't handouts? Okay, great, thanks for the etymology lesson — but what's your fucking point?

    The people decrying socialism are mad about what they perceive to be handouts, whether it's tax breaks or other subsidies. This isn't any different, except it's being applied to a fucking profitable international mega-corporation that absolutely 100% does not need these subsidies, whereas we have people in our country working full time and struggling to stay above water. Foxconn should pay every cent for what they need to set up shop in that state. It's bullshit.
    My point is that incentives =/= handouts. Your mistake (as a socialist) is to think that you or someone else is entitled to the fruits of another person’s/company labor. You are not, and as such, you misconstrued tax incentives for “hand outs”.
    That is what my (i quote) “fucking point” is.
    Another mistake economically illiterate, like you, often make is thinking that by taxing a corporation, you are taxing that corporation. In reality, that tax ALWAYS gets passed along to the consumer. Corporations themselves always shift the tax burden to the end of the chain - a consumer and they rarely care what the real tax burden is, as long as everyone else has to pay it. So, of course the irony here, is that you scream that companies need to be taxed more, while in reality what you are advocating is that you and other fools will be the ones picking up the tab for that “fair corporate tax”.
    IQ curve is a bitch when your are in the middle of the curve, or to the left of the median/mode, I suppose...
    edited July 2019 bigtds
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