Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group will build a 20 million-square-foot, $10 billion liquid-crystal display panel plant in southeastern Wisconsin, company founder and chairman Terry Gou and Gov. Scott Walker announced in a recent ceremony at the White House.
Wisconsin beat out several other states Foxconn considered for the plant, including Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Gov. Scott Walker hold up a
memorandum of understanding
between the state and the company.
To win the Foxconn deal, Walker offered the company an incentive package of up to $3 billion.
The plant, which is expected to be operational by 2020, will initially employ 3,000 people, with the potential to grow to 13,000. Walker said the positions would have an average salary of more than $53,000.
The incentive package from the state is tied to the level of job creation and capital investment the company makes. It will have to hire 13,000 people and make the full $10 billion investment to get the entire $3 billion subsidy, Walker said.
The incentives are expected to cost the state between $200 million and $250 million per year. The company will be eligible for $1.5 billion in tax credits for job creation, $1.35 billion for capital investments and $150 million from a sales tax holiday.
Walker and Gou signed a memorandum of understanding outlining the deal between the company and the state at an event at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The incentives provided by the state still must be approved by the Legislature, and Walker called a special session for lawmakers to review the deal.
The announcement of the deal ended weeks of speculation about the project that began when President Donald Trump, during an appearance at Waukesha County Technical College in June, said he and Walker were negotiating to bring a “major, incredible manufacturer” to the state.
Trump did not name the company at the time, but the next day the Associated Press broke the story that Wisconsin officials were in negotiations with Foxconn to build a plant in the state that would employ thousands of people.
Walker said the Foxconn facility will be the largest economic development project in the history of the state and could transform the Wisconsin economy, making it a hub of high-tech manufacturing. He said the project will support 10,000 construction jobs over the next four years, and will create “at least” 22,000 indirect and induced jobs throughout the state once operational. The company is expected to make $4.26 billion in supplier purchases annually, with one-third being made in Wisconsin.
“Foxconn’s new ecosystem will transform Wisconsin,” Walker said. “In fact, Terry (Gou) and I came up with a name. We call it Wisconn Valley. The region we will call Wisconn Valley will be the new global home to cutting-edge technology and innovation…this is exciting and transformational.”
Foxconn operates vast factories in China, where it employs about 1 million people and makes most of Apple’s iPhones, but so far it has not invested heavily in manufacturing in the United States.
“This time we go to America, it’s not just to build a factory, but to move our entire supply chain there,” Gou told shareholders in June.
