Another Glorious Day In Trump's Manufacturing Paradise

The president has bragged about Foxconn's factory in Wisconsin as a key trade war win. Insiders say it's been dubious all along.

This is the Eighth Wonder of the World.”

So declared President Donald Trump onstage last June at a press event at Foxconn’s new factory in Mount Pleasant, Wis. He was there to herald the potential of the Taiwanese manufacturing giant’s expansion into cheesehead country. He’d joined Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou and then- Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to celebrate a partnership he’d helped broker—“one of the great deals ever,” Trump said. In exchange for more than $4.5 billion in government incentives, Foxconn had agreed to build a high-tech manufacturing hub on 3,000 acres of farmland south of Milwaukee and create as many as 13,000 good-paying jobs for “amazing Wisconsin workers” as early as 2022.

In front of national media and an audience of several hundred, Trump talked up the larger meaning. For too long, he said, bad trade deals sent factory jobs to places like China, and that era was over. Yes, this Foxconn deal represented the largest public subsidy package to a foreign company in U.S. history, but it also marked a turning point for “restoring America’s industrial might.” Blue-collar jobs were coming home, starting with the Mount Pleasant facility and its LCD TV production. And what better bellwether for the success of his trade war than Foxconn Technology Group, a leading iPhone maker in China long synonymous with overseas manufacturing? “As Foxconn has discovered, there is no better place to build, hire, and grow than right here in the U.S.,” Trump said. “Made in the USA. It’s all happening.”