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Comment by SnowProblem | Hacker News Reader

What's the real story here? Why did Trump say the $10B would not be spent if he was not re-elected? What "changing global market conditions" is Foxconn referring to?

Edit: I found this interview here with a former Foxconn exec that goes some more detail: https://www.theverge.com/23030465/foxconn-lcd-factory-wiscon.... Summary as far as I can tell is that the deal from the previous republican governor was controversial because of the tax breaks and the next democratic governor renegotiated the deal. Politics, basically. I guess locals are OK with this? Seems unfortunate though since people lost their homes and it would have brought jobs.

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He was talking about his election in 2016, claiming that Foxconn would not invest this great sum of money had Hillary Clinton been elected. As usual, he was looking backwards and spewing nonsense.

> I found this interview here with a former Foxconn exec that goes some more detail

Alan Yeung is full of crap, completely untrustworthy.

You can see multiple times during the interview where Nilay immediately calls him out on his B.S. lies.

> if he was not re-elected

He didn’t say that. He said this investment wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been elected in 2016.

Thanks. That makes more sense.

Wow, that claim aged like milk didn't it?

Now it reads like "Wisconsin voters wouldn't have gotten scammed if you didn't elect Trump and Walker."

The real story is that Scott Walker offered FoxConn a nonsensical deal for a political victory for himself (Trump jumping onto it was a sideshow and irrelevant…the primary work was done by Scott Walker).

The deal essentially gave Foxconn free money without requiring it do anything and Foxconn figured why not take the money and then see if we can also do something.

They found out they couldn’t. They tried to pivot to a more software/IT focused investment but the properties they had picked were not ideal for that being far away from where IT people lived. And they eventually gave up.

Trump was taking credit for something someone else did, as per usual. It's really that simple.

The plans were always idiotic. The fact that Trump was too ignorant and/or poorly-advised not to take credit for them is just the icing on the kakistocracy.

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