Foxconn's promise to invest $10B in Wisconsin is now a distant memory | Hacker News Reader

Foxconn's promise to invest $10B in Wisconsin is now a distant memory

engadget.com

17 pointsthunderbong12 comments

no big deal for the US, a foreign company had to swallow a loss in order to give US President a domestic talking point. TSMC fabs currently experiencing very similar problems - differences in work ethic, workplace culture, low salaries for staff hired, and inflated targets for that hiring in order to make the politicians look good.

This article from Verge in 2020 was a great dive into the problems Foxconn had, and what TSMC will now also face

https://www.theverge.com/c/21507966/foxconn-empty-factories-...

At least cost-free for the US tax payer

The article makes it sound like it wasn't free for tax payers and there were a bunch of subsidies and infrastructure costs that were tax funded.

"Foxconn could hire people in the final weeks of the year, get tens of millions in subsidies, and be free to lay them off once the filing deadline passed"

"State and local governments spent at least $400 million, largely on land and infrastructure Foxconn will likely never need."

good point, the subsidies are of course US tax payers money. Nobody a winner then, save perhaps the politician who parlayed everyone's material losses to political capital!

There are definitely losers, and they're on US soil.

Residents lost their homes in Mount Pleasant to make way for this debacle ffs.

THAT I didn't know. What is the scenario here - compulsory home purchase?

https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2022/01/13/final-lawsuit-over-fox...

The Reply-All podcast did a great episode covering the Mount Pleasant / Foxconn events at the time:

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/wbhjwd/

I live in the area. They completely redid I-94, which was probably necessary anyway. What wasn't necessary was the complete rebuild of all the frontage roads and county highways in the area. I feel for the people that lost their house under imminent domain.

There are still some people here who think that either Foxconn is still ramping up, or that it's the current administration's fault, or that they're actually still hiring a bunch of people. I personally don't know a single person that's worked for Foxconn in the area, but I do know a few people in construction that either worked on the plant or on the infrastructure surrounding it.

The deal did have a stipulation with tax credits that Foxconn had to meet certain job numbers by specific dates or it had to pay them back. To my knowledge they have been paid. But yeah, as you pointed out that doesn't factor in the massive change to infrastructure.

i hate driving past that facility. it makes me sick, thinking of all the people who were forced to relocate for such a failure of a project. i also have not met a single person who has worked for Foxconn in Mount Pleasant, haven’t met a single person who works at their office in Milwaukee, nothing.

> This article from Verge in 2020 was a great dive into the problems Foxconn had, and what TSMC will now also face

"Imagine being in a job where you don’t really know if it’s real or not."

If you have to wonder, it probably isn't real.

Isn't foxconn just a low end mass manufacturer while TSMC is a genuine high tech semiconductor company? I suspect TSMC should have an easier time in the US than foxconn. But who knows. I remember the foxconn news was such a big deal and had such great fanfare. To end like this.

same issue though - you can't get US workers to do the work Foxconn / TSMC want them to do for the price they pay for them to do it.

https://www.gizmochina.com/2023/08/08/tsmc-plant-hiring-taiw...

there is a reason why manufacturing was offshored

The US doesnt care about $10B - it prints far more dollars than that. What it needs is a functioning chip-making factory of the tsmc scale.

Now it's tsmc's turn

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