Taiwan’s Foxconn is Planning to Build a Factory in Wisconsin That Could Create Up to 25,000 Jobs
By Carl Samson
Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer for Apple, has expressed its ambition of opening a major factory in Wisconsin — its first on American soil — expected to create thousands of jobs.
Foxconn chairman Terry Gou announced the plan at the White House on Wednesday in the presence of Donald Trump and two Wisconsin Republicans, House speaker Paul D. Ryan and Gov. Scott Walker.
“TV was invented in America,” Gou recalled, before noting that similar products such as LCD displays are now made elsewhere. “We are going to change that. It starts today in Wisconsin,” The New York Times quoted him as saying.
The factory, which proposes to be a $10 billion investment, is expected to create at least 3,000 jobs. However, Walker said that an additional 22,000 jobs may be made indirectly, considering that the factory hopes to become a 20-million-square-foot plant that’s basically three times the area of the Pentagon.
President Trump praised Gou:
“If I didn’t get elected, he definitely wouldn’t be spending $10 billion… This is a great day for America.”
Foxconn has not specified where exactly in Wisconsin its first American plant will be built, but stated that it will be in Ryan’s district on the southeastern part of the state.
Walker also offered to award $3 billion in tax incentives and other subsidies from Wisconsin to the company over the next 15 years in a memorandum of understanding on the investment.
Foxconn said that the investment “signifies the start of a series of investments by Foxconn in American manufacturing in the coming years.”
It must be noted, however, that Foxconn has a mixed record on its promises of creating new jobs in the US. As per Reuters, the company said in 2013 that it would invest $30 million and hire 500 employees for a Pennsylvania factory. That plant was never completed, though the manufacturer maintained a small operation in the state.
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