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Foxconn (from 8) incentive for the Asian company, however,
was cold, hard cash and the Republican
proposed plant in April 2017. Controversy governor promised that there would be
over the Foxconn deal began flying even plenty of that.
before Trump returned to the White
House.. While there were several other states with
similar access to large amounts of water,
People that follow such things complained i.e. the Great Lakes, none was prepared
that it was likely that the benefits to to be nearly as generous as Walker’s
Wisconsin and its residents from the Wisconsin.
Foxconn plant would greatly exceed the
costs of the deal to the state’s taxpayers. Foxconn, under the deal cut by Walker,
would receive subsidies ranging from $3
The total to Foxconn would, in fact, billion to $4.8 billion, paid in increments
represent the largest tax incentive ever over 15 years for its $10B investment.
bestowed upon a foreign company.
These payouts required Foxconn to meet
Environmentalists were beating the war certain, well-defined targets, according to
drums, too, worried about Foxconn’s Bruce Murphy, writing in The Verge (Oct.
impact to the land. Among other 28, 2018).
concerns they noted that Foxconn
would be exempted from Wisconsin’s
environmental rules and would receive
extensive water rights.
Building the technology park required
buying land through eminent domain,
when necessary. This alone stuck in
the craws of the soon to be displaced
homeowners who felt they were getting
the worst part of a bad bargain.
Before the deal was struck, Foxconn’s The Great Lakes region offered what the LC display
Gou had told Masayoshi (Mas) Son, head plant badly needed, besides money, plenty of water.
of the SoftBank Group in Japan, that the
U.S., despite being the second largest Apparently blinded by the prospect of the
consumer of TVs, surprisingly had no world-class Foxconn setting-up in the tiny
panel-making business. Wisconsin village — After all, the mighty
tech giant Apple was one of Foxconn’s top
Gou met with Gov. Walker in 2017, and customers — the Walker administration
the governor’s administration approved was content to overlook some necessary
a plan that would allow Foxconn to build aspects of due diligence.
a multi-billion dollar plant in Wisconsin’s
Racine County. Racine County was a vulnerable region in
a state that had been hit hard with the
Foxconn based its choice of location closure of a General Motors plant in Ryan’s
largely on water, which meant the Great nearby hometown of Janesville during the
Lakes region. Certainly the greatest 2008 recession. next page
