Foxconn continues to over-promise and under-deliver

In business, it is best to under-promise and over-deliver. Someone should remind Foxconn of that, as the company instead seems to be over-promising and under-delivering. The Taiwanese manufacturer secured more than $4 billion in tax and job credits from the state of Wisconsin in exchange for a promise of 13,000 new jobs. We have since learned that the company’s plan to produce large screens for TV’s and other consumer products would instead be a smaller plant, producing smaller screens for things like laptops. We have learned that the company is well short of its first year goal of creating more than 1000 jobs, and hasn’t even hired enough people to claim even one dollar in state tax credits. Now comes news that this supposed $10 billion plant won’t make screens at all. Those plans have been shelved. Instead, the company’s plant in Mount Pleasant will become what it calls a technology hub. It will be a research facility rather than a manufacturing plant. They will employ engineers and researchers rather than a manufacturing workforce. The company says it still remains committed to eventually employing 13,000 people, but also admits its plan to employ more than 5000 people by the end of 2020 will be significantly scaled back, and will likely employ barely 1000 people by the end of next year. We were told the Foxconn deal would be a game-changer in Wisconsin. But more and more it appears what is changing is the company’s ability to live up to its promises to Wisconsin taxpayers.