Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

Electronics manufacturer Foxconn is scaling back its plans to produce LCD panels in Wisconsin, a company executive told Reuters.

“In Wisconsin we’re not building a factory. You can’t use a factory to view our Wisconsin investment,” said Louis Woo, special assistant to Foxconn CEO Terry Gou.

The planned manufacturing plant had been touted by President Trump, who made an announcement about the project at the White House in 2017 and delivered remarks at a groundbreaking ceremony for the plant last year.

Foxconn originally planned to produce LCD television screens, but Woo told Reuters that those plans could be scaled back or canceled altogether.

[...]

Woo added that Foxconn intends to launch a "technology hub" rather than a manufacturing plant in Wisconsin. The hub would include research facilities as well as packaging and assembly operations, Woo told Reuters.

A source also told Reuters that the Foxconn project is likely to create only 1,000 jobs in Wisconsin by 2020, after the company originally said the plant would hire 5,200 people by that point.



  The Hill

Talk about your bait and switch. I'm having a difficult time believing they ever planned to build a factory in Wisconsin. What changed in terms of the economic feasibility?

[Woo] pointed to the high costs of making television screens in the U.S., according to Reuters.

“In terms of TV, we have no place in the U.S.,” he said. “We can’t compete.”

So why did Foxconn have a groundbreaking ceremony with Trump in the first place? Never mind.

Foxconn initially said the project would create a total of 13,000 jobs in Wisconsin, but it's unclear when all of those workers will be hired, according to Reuters.

The twelfth of never.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



UPDATE:

Oh, look. The magic beans are just...beans.

[...]

Give it another month, and it's liable to be a drive-thru restaurant concern.

This was going to be the lasting monument to Walker's greatness—his big, beautiful, stupid wall, as it were. Unfortunately, the Foxconn folks saw the sucker coming from a couple of hectares off. Instead, Wisconsin is now in hock to this company for the foreseeable future.

[...]

"Public-private partnership" is one of those slogans that sound very good at TED talks and around the shrimp station at Davos. Too often, however, the partnership leads to private profit and a public stick-up. I have more respect for someone who picks pockets on the subway.

  Charles P Pierce