When Donald Trump and then-Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker announced a plan to give billions of dollars to the notorious Taiwanese sweatshop operator Foxconn to build a super-factory in Wisconsin, knowledgeable people were alarmed.
In 2017, Trump and then-Wisconsin Governor (and Koch darling) Scott Walker announced that they would give Chinese manufacturing giant $3B in taxpayer subsidies to open the only flat panel display factory in the western hemisphere (the figure quickly grew to $4.1B), despite the company's long, documented history of lying to governments, sucking up subsidies, and never delivering the promised facilities or jobs.
The Verge's Josh Dzieza continues his outstanding coverage of Foxconn's shell-game in Wisconsin, where the company — promised billions in subsidies and tax-breaks by former governor Scott Walker, a Koch darling, and by Trump, who used Foxconn's promise of a major new Wisconsin factory to claim his policies were working — has lived up to its reputation for overpromising and underdelivering by absorbing billions in subsidies but never delivering on promised jobs.
Foxconn gave Wisconsin hard-line GOP governor Scott Walker and Donald Trump a great story to tell about the triumph of their ideology: that with enough corporate welfare, high-tech manufacturing jobs could come back to America, in the form of an LCD factory in Wisconsin that would employ 13,000 people.
Foxconn says the factory plan is back on after Trump personally reached out.
