In filings with the state, Foxconn says it now plans to employ 1,454 people and invest about $672 million into its still-under-construction factory in Mount Pleasent, Wisconsin.
Foxconn promised to make Wisconsin a hub for the manufacturing of HD television screens and other high-tech products, but the company never explained how it planned to make the math work.
Even if the dubious economics somehow worked out, the state wasn't going to come out ahead. The state's Legislative Fiscal Bureau, a number-crunching agency similar to the federal Congressional Budget Office, calculated that it would take the state until 2043 to recoup the $3 billion handout, which was the largest such subsidy in Wisconsin history.
Now, the official story is that Foxconn will use the factory for "Economic investment activities related to locating and operating a technology and manufacturing ecosystem," according to the company's new contract with the state.
The entire saga provides an obvious lesson about the wasteful mistakes that state governments make when they throw tax dollars at businesses that promise to create jobs.
The best way to create jobs in any state, of course, is to provide a stable economy with comparatively low taxes and a light regulatory touch for all-not to provide special treatment for some and stick others with the bill.
Trump saw the Foxconn deal not only as a way to create jobs, but as proof that reorienting supply chains was a matter of political will rather than economics.
https://reason.com/2021/04/21/foxconn-finally-admits-it-wont-create-13000-jobs-in-wisconsin/
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