It's A Real Wonder

Way back in 2017, Trump took credit for a deal with Taiwanese electronics powerhouse Foxconn to build a massive manufacturing campus in Wisconsin.  In 2018, at the ground breaking ceremony for what was touted to be a state of the art facility that would ultimately employee as many as 15,000 workers, Trump called the a yet to be built facility "the eighth wonder of the world."  

In 1990, Trump had declared his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City to be the eighth wonder.  Turns out that just like the ultimately bankrupt Taj Mahal, Foxconn's Mount Pleasant facility is going to fall well short of wonder status.  It appears that the people of Wisconsin are pushing back on providing Foxconn with the massive financial subsidies promised to lure Foxconn to their state in the first place. 

...Last year Gov. Tony Evers’ administration argued that the project was so vastly scaled back from the original plan that it no longer conformed to the agreement negotiated under his predecessor, Scott Walker, and as a result no longer qualified for the subsidies.

Aside from its completely downsized and repurposed "eighth wonder" Mount Pleasant campus, Foxconn's Wisconsin presence appears to be mostly empty buildings.

Foxconn originally promised to turn two buildings in Eau Claire into office space and research facilities. It never purchased one of the buildings and has taken out no substantive building permits for the other, the glass-fronted downtown building pictured above.

Matt Jewell, an engineering professor at the nearby University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, from which Foxconn was supposed to recruit, said there has been “no visible activity whatsoever” at the property. Foxconn was also absent at the school’s career fair this February.

Foxconn employs over 800,000 people, the vast majority in Taiwan, China, Malaysia and India.  The idea that Foxconn was ever going to create tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the US was just another Trump con (aided by his pal Scott Walker).  

But, Foxconn appears to be planning on doing a lot of hiring in this hemisphere.  Just not in the US.

Taiwan-based electronics manufacturers Foxconn and Pegatron are among companies eyeing new factories in Mexico, people with direct knowledge of the matter said, as the U.S.-China trade war and coronavirus pandemic prompt firms to reexamine global supply chains.

Brandishing a new deal locking in free trade with the world’s biggest consumer market, Mexico also has geography, low wages and time zones in its favor. Despite the global recession and concerns about the business climate under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, government data shows foreign investment largely holding up so far this year.

So, Trump touts a big return of manufacturing jobs to the US, but the jobs mostly end up in Mexico.  That people believe anything Trump says is really the "eighth wonder of the world."