Let’s see – On Wednesday, Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn said it was shifting the focus of its planned $10 billion Wisconsin campus away from blue-collar manufacturing to a research hub, but it is still committed to creating 13,000 jobs, as promised.
On Wednesday, Louis Woo, special assistant to Foxconn Chief Executive Terry Gou, told Reuters that the company’s plans have been scaled back and could even be shelved. He cited the steep cost of making advanced TV screens in the United States, where labor expenses are comparatively high. “In terms of TV, we have no place in the U.S.,” he said in an interview. “We can’t compete.”
Foxconn and the president talk
On Friday, after a conversation between Trump and Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou, the company said it would move “forward with our planned construction of a Gen 6 fab facility,” which is a type of plant that produces displays. The company, in a statement, reiterated that the “campus will serve both as an advanced manufacturing facility as well as a hub of high technology innovation for the region”.
The statement makes no mention of the 13,000 blue-collar workers that were supposed to be hired in the original plan so highly touted by Trump and former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. However, The Guardian points out, Foxconn has hired less than 1,000 workers, even though they had promised to hire 5,200 employees by 2020.
On Friday, President Donald Trump tweeted: “Great news on Foxconn in Wisconsin after my conversation with Terry Gou!”
Woo then spoke with Wisconsin’s new Democratic governor, Tony Evers, a past critic of the deal.
“From what I heard today… it looks like they’re going to focus on the generation 6 technology,” Evers said, according to Reuters. “They made commitments and we’re going to make sure they live up to them,” adding there’s “no limit to skepticism.”
Foxconn’s $20bn projects in US and China
On Thursday, the day before Foxconn’s miraculous reversal after talking with Trump, the Nikkei Asian Review broke the news that Foxconn Technology Group was delaying most of its planned production in a $9 billion (7 billion pounds) display panel project in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou for a minimum of six months.
According to internal documents, U.S.-China trade tensions on issues such as tariffs, industrial subsidies, intellectual property, and cybersecurity are playing a big role in determining what the company plans to do going forward.
The new plan may not meet the $10 billion mark
In Saturday’s Nikkei Asian Review, there are further details on what is really planned by Foxconn. The company now says the facility will be constructed within the next 18 months, covering seven sites. Included will be a research and development center, a high-performance data center, and a center related to artificial intelligence and 5G communications,
Foxconn has already seen to dissolving an engineering team set up by subsidiary Sharp and panel-making affiliate Innolux. So this part of the plan is long gone.
It is hard not to meet Foxconn’s reversal of its plans with a lot of skepticism. The tech giant is having some problems in response to the global market environment, and it has reached into the company’s home ground. As Nikkei points out, “It is uncertain whether Foxconn’s revised plan meets the $10 billion in investment promised to Trump.”
But, perhaps the most worrisome issue everyone in Wisconsin should be concerned over is Trump’s inability to separate the truth from what he wants his constituents to hear. So far, he doesn’t have a very good track record on telling the truth, and it might be a smart move to take his latest tweet on Foxconn with a grain of salt.
