President Joe Biden visited the critical electoral toss-up state of Wisconsin today to celebrate Microsoft’s commitment to build a $3.3 billion plant on the same ground that Donald Trump visited as President in 2018 for a groundbreaking ceremony for a similar project.
Six years ago Trump was celebrating the promise by Taiwan-based Foxconn, the world’s largest manufacturing company and primary assembler of iPhones, to build a $10 billion operation in Racine County, Wisconsin and create thousands of American jobs.
But that Foxconn plan never fully came together — and while a few structures were built, the much-hyped manufacturing future of the area lay dormant. The land where Trump and then Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker dug their symbolic shovels into the earth is the land Microsoft’s new facility will occupy, and Biden in his visit delivered an attempt at one-upmanship with Trump as he celebrated Microsoft’s move.
Biden: Trump promised a $10 billion investment by Foxconn. In, fact, he came here with Ron Johnson literally holding a golden shovel… Look what happened. They dug a hole with those golden shovels, and then they fell into it. pic.twitter.com/6nuE82IiW2
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 8, 2024
Biden mocked Trump and company’s “golden shovels” and Trump’s 2018 promise that Foxconn would build the “8th wonder of the world.” Biden called the now-derelict plan a “con” and said the politicians who made those promises dug holes only to fall into them. “Foxconn,” Biden said, “turned out to be just that, a con.”
Drawing a contrast, Microsoft’s vice chair and president Brad Smith told The Associated Press that Microsoft had a “steadfast commitment to under-promising and over-delivering.” Smith praised the Biden administration and Wisconsin’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers for providing economic policies that set the stage for the developments.