Now Foxconn is manufacturing again in Wisconsin? Surrrre

Oh, so the Foxconn factory is back on again?

Foxconn Technology Group now says it will indeed build a liquid crystal display manufacturing plant in Wisconsin, following talks between President Donald Trump and company CEO Terry Gou.

The Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer said it will move forward with construction of a so-called Generation 6 factory, or "fab" which typically produces screens for cell phones, tablets and small televisions.

The announcement came after "productive discussions between the White House and the company, and after a personal conversation between President Donald J. Trump and Chairman Terry Gou," Foxconn said in a statement.

There’s also this intriguing part of the Journal-Sentinel story, which indicates that this week's uproar started when Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou had a typical annual review of all of Foxconn’s projects, including an honest analysis of the Wisconsin project.

Once word got out about what Gou had mentioned in the meeting, an anonymous source told the Journal-Sentinel said Foxconn execs were getting phone calls from Wisconsinites freaking out that the scam was falling apart.

"They call it a 24-hour root canal. He goes through everybody’s business plans. And as that happens I think bits and pieces of this start to spin out in the press over there."

While there's no doubt Foxconn has been re-evaluating what type of manufacturing to do in Wisconsin, some accounts appear to have portrayed that as re-evaluation of whether to do manufacturing at all, the observer said.

With the affair threatening to boil into a full-blown crisis, Wisconsin backers of Foxconn contacted Gou's top assistant, Louis Woo, Wednesday night and warned him that the company's reputation was at risk, the source said.

Mr. Gou knows how things really are with Foxconn.

COME ON! At this point, how weak and dumb do you have to be to think a panel factory will ever happen in Racine County? I’m not believing the Gen 6 factory ever opens until I actually see a product roll off the line. But as I’ve said, the best thing for Wisconsin taxpayers would be if Foxconn got a one-time check, and they pack up and go away, so that would be fine with me.

Either Trump, WisGOP and Foxconn is BSing us, or Foxconn is as unstable as the senile fool in the White House. Which would make this the project's theme song.



There was a great passage in CNN’s report from today about Foxconn that summed things up well.

Some experts following the facility's development have doubts about whether Foxconn will ever follow through on completing the Wisconsin plant. Steven Deller, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin, laughed when told of the latest announcement Friday afternoon, pointing to other promised Foxconn plants that were never built.

"I think they're playing games," he said. "They've done the same thing to India, Brazil and Pennsylvania. They have a track record of making promises and not living up to them.”

Deller said from the beginning of the negotiations it made zero sense to build a flat screen plant in the United States.

"These kinds of screens have become a commodity," he said. "The only way to be competitive is to drive costs down as much as possible. That means going to Asian markets for cheap labor. The R&D component, that makes sense. If you're looking at expanding your product line, it makes sense to do it in the US."

And let's not forget, Foxconn is trying to get the intellectual property of any research UW-Madison might do for them, in another deal that Wisconsin shouldn't be part of.

The Fox-con is clearly a fiasco, and the desperate flailing of the Trump Administration, WisGOP and Foxconn to cover that up is beyond pathetic. Evers and Dems should hammer on all of them, tighten the screws further, and not give these untrustworthy lowlifes any chance to come off the mat after what they’ve tried to pull over on Wisconsinites this week.