The development followed a tumultuous few days in which Foxconn sent mixed signals about its proposed $10 billion facility in Wisconsin — an investment that Mr. Trump announced in 2017 at a White House event with Mr. Gou.

It was not immediately clear how many manufacturing jobs the company would ultimately create. The project, with a promise of 13,000 jobs, became a focus of political contention in Wisconsin over the $4 billion in tax credits and other inducements that it involved over a 15-year period.

On Wednesday, Louis Woo, the special assistant to Mr. Gou, told Reuters that the company was reconsidering whether it would make advanced TV screens at the site, citing the high cost of making them in the United States.

“In terms of TV, we have no place in the U.S.,” Mr. Woo told Reuters. “We can’t compete.”

The comments took Wisconsin lawmakers by surprise, and prompted concern among local officials that the company might not devote the facility to large-scale production, after all.

After Mr. Woo’s initial statement, the company insisted that it was not retreating from its plan to build a factory but was re-evaluating what products would be made there. Mr. Woo later told The New York Times that while the company still planned to hire 13,000 workers, he expected that only 25 percent of them would be focused on manufacturing. “The remainder of our work force will be knowledge workers,” he added.