President Biden declared Wednesday that the Trump administration’s much-touted efforts to bring a Foxconn facility to Wisconsin were nothing more than a “con,” contrasting the failed project with a new investment in the state from Microsoft.
Biden traveled to Racine, Wis., to announce Microsoft would invest $3.3 billion to build a new artificial intelligence data center at the same site of the Foxconn project that did not develop as promised.
Biden invoked former President Trump’s visit to Wisconsin in 2018 in which he predicted the Foxconn campus would be the “eighth wonder of the world” and used a golden shovel for the ceremonial groundbreaking.
“Are you kidding me? Look what happened,” Biden said. “They dug a hole with those golden shovels, and then they fell into it.”
“They did shovel some dirt,” the president continued. “One hundred homes were bulldozed. They wasted hundreds of millions of dollars of your state and local tax dollars to promise a project that never happened. Foxconn turned out to be just that, a con. Go figure.”
Technology giant Foxconn announced in 2017 it had planned to invest $10 billion in a facility that would create thousands of jobs. The project was hailed as a major win for the Trump administration at the time but never materialized.
The investment was eventually scaled back to less than $700 million, and the number of jobs created from the project was slashed from 13,000 to roughly 1,500.
Microsoft bought the land originally slated for the the Foxconn facility in April 2023 for $50 million.
The White House said the Microsoft project is expected to create 2,300 union construction jobs and 2,000 permanent jobs over time.
Wednesday marked Biden’s fourth visit to Wisconsin of the year, underscoring its electoral importance. He won the state in 2020 by fewer than 21,000 votes, and polls show another close race in the Badger State this November between the incumbent and Trump.
An average of polls from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ shows Trump leading Biden by 3 percentage points in the state.
“Joe Biden is trying to save face in Racine County as Wisconsinites feel the pain of Bidenomics,” Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley said in a statement.
“Manufacturing has stalled, family farms are shuttering, and costs are up for everything from electricity and gas to food and housing,” he added. “It’s no wonder why Biden is losing in Wisconsin and battleground states across the country: his policies have failed and people want President Trump back in office.”
