‘It’s a huge subsidy’: the $4.8bn gamble to lure Foxconn to America
By Dominic Rushe : theguardian – excerpt
It is the largest giveaway to a foreign firm in US history. Trump claims a win – but will struggling Wisconsin benefit?
Wisconsinites joke that there are two seasons in Wisconsin: winter and construction. As traffic crawls down the Interstate 94, sandwiched between endless columns of orange cones, construction is in full bloom.
Mount Pleasant, a sleepy village of about 26,000 people in Racine County, halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago, is developing into one enormous construction site as it prepares to become home to a $10bn (£7.6bn) state-of-the-art flat-panel display factory for Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics company best known for making Apple iPhones in China…
But what probably sold Foxconn on Mount Pleasant were the massive tax breaks Wisconsin offered to seal the deal – breaks that could end up costing the state $4.8bn if the project hits all of its targets. It’s the latest giveaway in a series of corporate welfare cheques cut for highly profitable tech companies and the largest to a foreign firm ever in the US… (more)
