A FoxConn logo is seen before the arrival of U.S. President Donald Trump as he participates in the Foxconn Technology Group groundbreaking ceremony for its LCD manufacturing campus, in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, June 28, 2018.





When Foxconn breaks ground on Thursday on a $10bn LCD manufacturing complex in Wisconsin, President Donald Trump will be there to claim credit for securing the Taiwanese group’s promise to deliver 13,000 jobs.

But while Mr. Trump helps Foxconn celebrate in Racine county, Wisconsin — a key swing district that helped him win the presidency in 2016 — just up the road at Harley-Davidson, executives will be figuring out who will lose their jobs, after the company said it must offshore production to battle retaliatory EU trade tariffs.

That landed Harley in the presidential doghouse. In a series of early morning tweets on Tuesday, Mr. Trump lashed out at the company, gleefully forecasting more offshoring will be the “beginning of the end” for the iconic American brand.

But Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer and a key supplier to Apple, was sending exactly the message that Mr. Trump wanted to deliver, with its vote of confidence in US manufacturing, and in Wisconsin, part of the industrial heartland that Mr. Trump had promised to save. So the timing could not be better for an event focused on the jobs story that Mr. Trump wanted to tell: a $10bn deal that he brokered, with the not insignificant help of $3bn in state aid and a further $1bn in local incentives and highway funding.

The project is controversial. Proponents claim it will jump-start the modernization of an area hit hard by globalization, while also creating tens of thousands of new jobs in construction and knock-on industries, on top of the 13,000 promised by Foxconn.

Critics said Wisconsin offered too much state money to land the project. They also claimed the scheme was an environmental threat, although Foxconn last week announced a water recycling plan that could defuse some of that opposition. And a small number of landowners are still refusing to sell their homes for the project, although the local village has threatened to take them by eminent domain if necessary, raising the risk of protracted litigation. Skeptics also point to a promised $30m Foxconn factory in Pennsylvania that never got built.

“I don’t think it will fail to happen like in Pennsylvania” said Matt Montemurro, president of the local chamber of commerce, the Racine Area Manufacturers and Commerce. “We are down the road far enough now.”

Mr. Trump plans to hold a fundraising breakfast on the fringes of the event, after blitzing his followers with emails urging them to pay for the equivalent of online raffle tickets for the chance to break bread with the president.

Only a few hundred Foxconn jobs are on the horizon so far. Construction is just getting under way on the 1,000 acre advanced manufacturing facility, which the Taiwanese company hopes will one day anchor a Silicon Valley-style high technology center in the heart of the Rust Belt Midwest. But with over $100m in construction contracts recently awarded, jobs in the construction trades will start opening up soon; the company and the state are forecasting 16,000 temporary jobs will be created building the facility.

“Foxconn will serve as a magnet for talent,” said Jenny Trick, director of the Racine County Economic Development Corporation, which beat nearby Kenosha county in bidding for the deal.

And the boost in construction work was already good news, said local resident Tim Price, who works in construction — even though his house was commandeered for the development. Mr. Price sold his three-year-old home for 40 per cent over the appraised price to make way for Foxconn. “He’s a guy that can make deals,” he said of the president, as he gazed across the fields to where yellow construction machines are just visible on the horizon, breaking ground for Foxconn. He voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and plans to do so again in 2020.

Louis Woo, special adviser to Foxconn founder and chief executive Terry Gou, said trade friction was a driving force behind the company’s decision to set up in Wisconsin, which was made before Mr. Trump launched his current trade campaign. “That’s one of the reasons why we are here, because of the escalation of the trade dispute between the two biggest trading partners (US and China)”, he told the Financial Times in an interview. He forecast a happy ending to the current friction though: referring to the leaders of China and the US, he said “I believe they have somehow struck a friendship at a level of trust, in just a matter of time they will come to an agreement on how to solve this issue”.

Supply of skilled labor for the plant could be a tougher nut to crack. Labor is tight in the surrounding area, as it is in much of the Midwest, and the kind of high-tech skills Foxconn needs are in short supply. But Mr. Woo says Foxconn is “not just building a factory, it’s building an ecosystem to encourage start-ups”, adding “we want to build an ecosystem to rival that of Silicon Valley, so the young generation of talent, instead of going to west or east coast, stays in the Midwest or even comes to the Midwest”.

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