Nearly six years after then-President Donald Trump promised Racine, Wisconsin, citizens that the “eighth wonder of the world” would be built there in the shape of a chip factory run by Taiwanese semiconductor giant Foxconn, President Joe Biden fulfilled his own competing promise. Biden announced on Wednesday the construction of a $3.3 billion artificial intelligence data center on the site of the defunct Foxconn plant.
Microsoft, the company that will own and operate the data center, expects to employ 2,300 unionized workers during the construction phase and eventually need 2,000 permanent employees at the site.
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The facility’s location, Racine, was once a Badger State industrial powerhouse before globalization and manufacturing slowdowns resulted in major employment losses.
Trump, who promised an economic revival during his presidency, visited Racine in June 2018 to announce the development of a Foxconn semiconductor fabrication facility, which he claimed would generate 13,000 jobs.
However, the projected fabrication facility never materialized, leaving a barren site and recollections of broken promises from the former president’s visit six years ago.
During a speech on Wednesday, Biden blamed the drop in employment in Racine and other areas on “trickle-down economics” favored by Trump and his advisers. He recalled how the former president had brought a gold-colored shovel to break ground on the facility in a widely publicized announcement alongside Republican Senator Ron Johnson and then-governor Scott Walker, despite the fact that nothing came of it.
Foxconn’s planned investment never materialized, despite the state spending more than $500 million to purchase and prepare the land.
Biden remarked, “Look what happened—they dug a hole [with] those golden shovels, and then they fell into it,” adding that Wisconsinites’ tax dollars had “bought and bulldozed” “hundreds of homes” for “a project that never happened.”
“Foxconn turned out to be just that—aa con,” he stated. “Go figure.”
Biden then mentioned that 83,500 people have departed Wisconsin during Trump’s administration. He contrasted this with the creation of 178,000 jobs in Wisconsin since Biden took office in 2021.
“We’re going to create more here in Racine, big time,” he stated.
Biden asserted that his administration’s “Investing in America agenda” has “created $866 billion in private sector investment nationwide” and contributed hundreds of thousands of jobs to the US economy, “building new semiconductor factories, electric vehicles, battery factories, and so much more.”.
In an upbeat speech about the economy, the president vowed that the job growth witnessed thus far is “only the beginning.”.
“We’re seeing the great American rebound story all over Wisconsin—and, quite frankly, the entire country.” “The bottom line is that we’re doing what’s always worked in this country: giving people a fair shot, leaving no one behind, and growing the economy from the bottom up—not the top down,” he declared, before finishing his remarks to chants of “four more years” from a rowdy gathering of union workers.
The president’s visit to Wisconsin was a clear rebuke to the former president, who was scheduled to spend the day on Wednesday at his Palm Beach, Florida, home visiting with fans who purchased Trump-branded NFTs. He did so while on a day off from his New York criminal trial for allegedly manipulating business documents.
According to the White House, Biden’s visit to the state was intended to highlight “a community at the heart of his commitment to invest in places that have historically been overlooked or failed by the last administration’s policies.”.
“President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is growing the economy from the middle-out and bottom-up, giving Americans more breathing room, and unleashing hundreds of billions of dollars of private sector investment in industries of the future, including AI, clean energy, semiconductors, and more,” the White House stated.
