The deal was supposedly quite simple: Foxconn (the company best known for manufacturing the iPhone), President Trump, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker all announced that Foxconn would build a 20-million-square-foot display factory in Wisconsin that would bring 13,000 manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Wisconsin promised more than $4 billion in tax credits to Foxconn, cleared land by pushing people out of their homes, and diverted water from Lake Michigan to support the factory. A lot of people got excited about this promised American manufacturing renaissance and left good jobs to join it.
But it turned out that while Foxconn was putting on a great show, no LCD factory was actually getting built, even though Foxconn kept saying it was happening.
The interview is fascinating case of a question dodging. If there is any benefit of the doubt for Foxconn it quickly evaporates over the course of the conversation. Taking it with a grain of salt, this is the explanation Yeung provided:
…the business condition and the investment climate changed dramatically in Wisconsin.
In the global sense, Chinese manufacturers were flooding the market with big panels because they have a lot of Gen 10.5 — or maybe even a Gen 11 — fabs coming on stream. A lot of those products were shipped based on tremendous amounts of support and subsidies within mainland China. Even the Foxconn fab in southern China had a tough time competing.
This still doesn’t explain the failure to engage with the public about the abandoned project, which the interview really drives home. Read the whole interview here, it’s worth it.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Oh wow, that really seemed very evasive. People in Wisconsin are largely bitter about this, as far as I know from local news, etc. Better to under-promise and over-deliver, but that doesn’t get governments beating down your door with tax credits and free things.
Oh wow, that really seemed very evasive. People in Wisconsin are largely bitter about this, as far as I know from local news, etc. Better to under-promise and over-deliver, but that doesn’t get governments beating down your door with tax credits and free things.