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This month, the Wisconsin state government declined to pay the refundable tax subsidies to Foxconn, the Taiwanese conglomerate that arrived in Wisconsin in 2017 with the promise of a plant that would make LCD TVs and monitors and employ 13,000 people. It seems this "project" never did really get off the ground. The original vision of 13,000 workers soon scaled down to 5,200; then it plummeted still further as no one seemed to have a vision for what these people were going to do. After it became clear that it wouldn't be profitable to make LCD screens (something neither the company nor the state seriously investigated before announcing the deal), Foxconn searched for other uses of the gigantic space they had already built. Casting about for an endeavor that would allow them to hang onto the subsidies, they explored alternatives such as innovation services, fish farming, and storage. Eventually, they just started adding workers to hit the minimum target of 520 employees by the end of 2019, but the government concluded these last-minute employees, many of whom didn't have a clear job assignment, were not eligible to be counted under the terms of the contract. As of now, there is still no plan for what to do with the space, but it seems very unlikely that anyone will ever use it for LCD fabrication or any other high-tech manufacturing.

It is always easy to point fingers after this kind of train wreck. The administration of former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker certainly deserves some heat for their naivetÈ. The national administration didn't help, declaring at the ground breaking that the Foxconn plant would be the "eighth wonder of the world." And, if you're one who believes that all Asian companies are scarily efficient and well run, the recent story of the Wisconsin project at The Verge [1] will surely disabuse you of this preconception with regard to Foxconn.

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