Empty Building, Empty Promises, An Empty Man

 

In 2017, Trump touted the proposed Foxconn manufacturing facility in Wisconsin as "the eighth wonder of the world" long before any actual buildings were erected.  Today, a few building shells are in place, but none of the interiors are more than partially finished.  The project has no purpose, as none of Foxconn's business units have any idea what they could profitably manufacture in the United States.  Money spent on the facilities is well below commitments made by the company and the company's hiring process is based on hiring just enough employees to meet its annual commitment in November and firing them after the first of the next year.  It's all a con that has been perpetuated by Trump and Foxconn on Trump's behalf.  

But in actual reality, the project has succeeded in manufacturing mostly this: an endless supply of wonderful things for the President to promise his supporters. This past weekend, in an interview with a local Wisconsin TV station, Trump insisted Foxconn had built “one of the most incredible plants I’ve ever seen” in Mount Pleasant and would keep its promises and more if he was reelected. “They will do what I tell them to do,” he said. “If we win the election, Foxconn is going to come into our country with money like no other company has come into our country.”

No one wanted to believe promises like this more than the people who went to work for Foxconn in Wisconsin. They each came to regret different things: the wasted time, the jobs they’d left, the integrity lost making deals and offering jobs only to have the company change course. But one common theme was frustration that it hadn’t turned out to be real and that long after they’d learned the truth, they saw the facade still standing. “There are a lot of good people who fell for this,” said one employee, shortly before departing a job at Foxconn. “Who wanted to see it succeed.”

“We got screwed,” another former employee said. “The state got screwed.”

It's like Trump's casino business, built on fraud and financed by other people's money.  And, like all of Trump's businesses, it's a con that simply falls apart when seen in the light of reality.