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Wednesday, May 08, 2024 7:27:53 PM
Trump’s “Incredible” Foxconn Deal Turns Out to Be a Another Massive Con Job
Trumps Foxconn was another republican con in Wisconsin.""
such an incredible deal .. couldn't be more incredible .. did i say incredible, yeah, it is as i
am, just joking, it really is the most incredible thing for Wisconsin, all thanks to incredible me.
This may turn out to be the great dealmaker’s greatest scam yet.
By Bess Levin
November 5, 2018
By Andy Manis/Getty Images.
Last month, at a rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, Donald Trump introduced Governor Scott Walker to the stage with a boast .. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/10/24/watch_live_president_trump_holds_maga_rally_in_mosinee_wisconsin.html .. regarding a dubious, shared accomplishment. “I got him set up with an incredible company called Foxconn,” Trump told the crowd, referring to the Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant that had agreed to build its first U.S. plant in the Badger State. “[Foxconn] came to Wisconsin with the most incredible plan . . . It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. We toured it, and we had a ribbon-cutting a few months ago. And I handed it over to Scott . . . there’s no plant like it anywhere in the United States. One of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. One of the most incredible things.”
And it’s true! There is nothing like the literally incredible Foxconn deal in the United States, because the Foxconn deal—brokered by First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner .. https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/president-trump-welcomes-foxconn-white-house-major-jobs-announcement/ —has turned out to be less of a jobs boon than an economic nuclear bomb, and not the good kind, either. To put it more elegantly, the Foxconn deal is the ultimate example of Trump promising Americans the world and then handing them a flaming bag of s--t.
Dan Kaufman, writing for The New Yorker, illuminates some of the many ways .. https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/did-scott-walker-and-donald-trump-deal-away-the-governors-race-to-foxconn .. that the Foxconn deal will screw Wisconsin locals for years to come:
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* The deal will cost taxpayers more than $4.5 billion in subsidies, but because manufacturing companies in Wisconsin are already exempt from paying taxes, “Foxconn, which generated a hundred and fifty-eight billion dollars in revenue last year, will receive much of this subsidy in direct cash payments from taxpayers”—the largest subsidy given to a foreign corporation in U.S. history
* If Wisconsinites ever see a return on their investment, it’ll be in 2042 at the earliest, according to analysis from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau
* Good old Scott Pruitt did Foxconn a solid by “overrul[ing] the objections of his staff to grant most of southeastern Wisconsin an exemption from limits on smog pollution” so the plant can poison the air to its heart’s delight
* The company has been granted special court privileges by the state legislature, like the ability to make numerous appeals of unfavorable rulings in a single case
* The town’s Village Board of Trustees has been using eminent domain to expel obstinate homeowners, forcing them to “sell at a price determined by the village.” They’ve been able to do so by decreeing the 2,800-acre area around the plant “blighted,” a designation typically reserved for property that is “detrimental to the public health, safety, or welfare,” but which the board has extended to include property that “impairs or arrests the sound growth of the community”
All this, when the U.S. economy is already minting some 200,000 jobs a month, was designed to create 13,000 new, middle-class manufacturing jobs, as Foxconn and Trump .. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/foxconn-wisconsin-investment .. promised. Except, as Kaufman reports, the Foxconn deal will actually create far fewer jobs, and most of them will not be of the blue-collar variety.
. . . the company recently changed the type of factory it plans to build, downsizing to a highly automated plant that will only require three thousand employees, ninety per cent of them “knowledge workers,” such as engineers, programmers, and designers. Almost all of the assembly work will be done by robots. Terry Gou, Foxconn’s chairman, has said he plans to replace eighty percent of Foxconn’s global workforce with “Foxbots” in the next five to ten years. The company still says it will hire thirteen thousand employees in Wisconsin, but it has fallen short of similar promises in Brazil, India, and Pennsylvania, among other places. Foxconn has already replaced sixty thousand workers who were earning roughly $2.50 an hour in China. Even the expansion of I-94, which is being done to accommodate Foxconn (and being paid for by Wisconsin taxpayers) reflects Foxconn’s faith in automation: the company and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation have discussed dedicating lanes to self-driving cars and trucks.
The problems go on and on. Because the plant will be located 20 miles from the Illinois border, many employees will likely not actually be Wisconsin residents. There are concerns from local environmental groups regarding what will become of the water supply .. https://journaltimes.com/opinion/editorial/journal-times-editorial-foxconn-and-our-water-supply/article_1da26180-0967-5e5e-937e-ae84bab5b69b.html . Billions in taxpayer money will be shifted away from places they could be used—like on the state’s crumbling roads or understaffed rural schools. All this, again, to create very few jobs, in the scheme of things. According to calculations by two former University of Wisconsin business-school professors, “if Foxconn’s taxpayer subsidies were given to random entrepreneurs, the money would generate more than ninety thousand jobs.”
The Foxconn deal is, in other words, a lot like many of the other “incredible“ feats brought to America by the mind behind Trump University and the United States Football League and the Carrier plant that laid off more than 600 workers and the Ford factory that got moved to China and the trillion-dollar corporate tax cut that has mysteriously failed to trickle down. Incredible, indeed.
WATCH - Watch the 2024 Met Gala Red Carpet Replay - Presented by eBay and Porsche
In a statement, a company representative said, “Foxconn is fully committed to our investment of at least $10 billion in building our state-of-the-art Wisconsin Valley Science and Technology Park in Wisconsin and to meeting all contractual obligations with the relevant government agencies.”
**
You’ll never believe it but Trump has gone easy on corporate wrongdoing
We know, it’s a total shock! Per *The New York Times ..https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/us/trump-sec-doj-corporate-penalties.html .. :*
-----
In the final months of the Obama administration, Walmart was under pressure from federal officials to pay nearly $1 billion and accept a guilty plea to resolve a foreign bribery investigation.
Barclays faced demands that it pay nearly $7 billion to settle civil claims that it had sold toxic mortgage investments that helped fuel the 2008 financial crisis, and the Royal Bank of Scotland was ensnared in a criminal investigation over its role in the crisis.
The three corporate giants complained that the Obama administration was being unreasonable and stood their ground, according to people briefed on the investigations. After President Trump took office, they looked to his administration for a more sympathetic ear—and got one.
Federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission have yet to charge Walmart, and the Justice Department reached a much lower settlement agreement with Barclays in March, for $2 billion. R.B.S. paid a civil penalty, but escaped criminal charges altogether.
-----
According to analysis by the Times comparing the last 20 months of the Obama administration with the first 20 months of the Trump administration, there has been: a 62 percent plunge in penalties imposed and ill-gotten gains ordered returned by the Securities and Exchange Commission; a 72 percent drop in corporate penalties from criminal prosecutions at the Justice Department; and just one-quarter the amount of penalties imposed on the banking industry by the S.E.C. But while Brandon Garrett, a Duke University professor, told the Times the the sharp falloff has led to the sense among companies that “there’s no reason to fear prosecution for committing serious corporate crimes,” Trump’s S.E.C. is shocked and offended by the notion it is going easy on corporate America. “The article’s conclusion that enforcement of the federal securities laws has flagged rests on deeply flawed methodology,” Stephanie Avakian and Steven Peikin, the heads of enforcement, said in a statement. “As the thorough analysis in our annual report makes clear, the division of enforcement’s performance, effectiveness, and activity level during our tenure compares favorably with any period in the commission’s history.”
**
Under Armour will no longer allow employees to use company funds at strip clubs
Meaning, yes, there was a time in which swiping corporate credit cards for lap dances and the like was standard company practice .. https://www.wsj.com/articles/under-armours-metoo-moment-no-more-strip-clubs-on-company-dime-1541450209 :
---
Over the years, executives and employees of the sports-apparel company, including Chairman and Chief Executive Kevin Plank, went with athletes or co-workers to strip clubs after some corporate and sporting events, and the company often paid for the visits of many attendees, people familiar with the matter said. . . . In a Feb. 20 e-mail to staff, Under Armour’s finance chief, David Bergman, said the company would no longer reimburse certain expenses, including adult entertainment, limousine services and gambling, according to the e-mail, which was reviewed by the Journal.
One venue popular with some employees was the Scores club, featuring nude dancers, near downtown Baltimore and a short drive from Under Armour headquarters. On some visits, employees charged hundreds of dollars there to the company, according to some of the people familiar with the matter.
---
In a statement, Plank told The Wall Street Journal: “Our teammates deserve to work in a respectful and empowering environment. We believe that there is systemic inequality in the global workplace and we will embrace this moment to accelerate the ongoing meaningful cultural transformation that is already under way at Under Armour. We can and will do better.”
**
Goldman Sachs will change fewer lives this year
The firm, which is currently dealing the fallout of two former employees being indicted on criminal charges tied to the alleged theft of $4.5 billion from Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, is inducting a historically tiny number of people into what was once essentially the Brotherhood of F--k You Money, and has now been downgraded to the Brotherhood of A Lot of Money:
---
The Wall Street firm is set to name its smallest class of new partners in years this week, according to people familiar with the matter. It’s the first crop of promotions under Chief Executive David Solomon, who aims to keep Goldman’s upper ranks exclusive and compensate for a recent influx of outside hires.
Fewer than 65 people are likely to get the nod, the people said. That would be the smallest class since 1998, when Goldman was still a private company, and fewer than the 84 promoted two years ago.
Being a Goldman partner once meant tying one’s personal fortunes to the firm’s. From its founding in 1869 until its 1999 initial public offering, Goldman’s partners funded its balance sheet, sharing profits and shouldering losses.
Today the title is largely symbolic—partners own less than 5 percent of the firm—but the every-other-year selection process remains a central part of Goldman’s identity, a way to reward and motivate employees and guard the firm’s culture.
**
Area man’s lips move, ergo area man tells lies
Gotta get the good ones in before voters head to the polls!
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1059539625344143361
Elsewhere!
Wall Street Moguls Predict the Dems Will Take the House, the G.O.P.
Gains in the Senate, and They Remain Life’s Great Winners (The Hive)
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/wall-street-predictions-midterms
Goldman Says World Economy “Past the Best” (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-05/goldman-says-world-economy-past-the-best-as-2019-looks-softer
Inside a secretive billionaire club’s plan to help Democrats take Congress (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/02/2018-elections-outside-money-democrats-democrat-alliance-soros-steyer-956032
No Sleep Till Brexit: The City Scrambles to Deal with Quitting the E.U. (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-01/no-sleep-till-brexit-the-city-scrambles-to-deal-with-quitting-the-eu?srnd=premium
More -- https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/donald-trump-foxconn-scam
Trumps Foxconn was another republican con in Wisconsin.""
such an incredible deal .. couldn't be more incredible .. did i say incredible, yeah, it is as i
am, just joking, it really is the most incredible thing for Wisconsin, all thanks to incredible me.
This may turn out to be the great dealmaker’s greatest scam yet.
By Bess Levin
November 5, 2018
By Andy Manis/Getty Images.
Last month, at a rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, Donald Trump introduced Governor Scott Walker to the stage with a boast .. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/10/24/watch_live_president_trump_holds_maga_rally_in_mosinee_wisconsin.html .. regarding a dubious, shared accomplishment. “I got him set up with an incredible company called Foxconn,” Trump told the crowd, referring to the Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant that had agreed to build its first U.S. plant in the Badger State. “[Foxconn] came to Wisconsin with the most incredible plan . . . It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. We toured it, and we had a ribbon-cutting a few months ago. And I handed it over to Scott . . . there’s no plant like it anywhere in the United States. One of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. One of the most incredible things.”
And it’s true! There is nothing like the literally incredible Foxconn deal in the United States, because the Foxconn deal—brokered by First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner .. https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/president-trump-welcomes-foxconn-white-house-major-jobs-announcement/ —has turned out to be less of a jobs boon than an economic nuclear bomb, and not the good kind, either. To put it more elegantly, the Foxconn deal is the ultimate example of Trump promising Americans the world and then handing them a flaming bag of s--t.
Dan Kaufman, writing for The New Yorker, illuminates some of the many ways .. https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/did-scott-walker-and-donald-trump-deal-away-the-governors-race-to-foxconn .. that the Foxconn deal will screw Wisconsin locals for years to come:
Advertisement
* The deal will cost taxpayers more than $4.5 billion in subsidies, but because manufacturing companies in Wisconsin are already exempt from paying taxes, “Foxconn, which generated a hundred and fifty-eight billion dollars in revenue last year, will receive much of this subsidy in direct cash payments from taxpayers”—the largest subsidy given to a foreign corporation in U.S. history
* If Wisconsinites ever see a return on their investment, it’ll be in 2042 at the earliest, according to analysis from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau
* Good old Scott Pruitt did Foxconn a solid by “overrul[ing] the objections of his staff to grant most of southeastern Wisconsin an exemption from limits on smog pollution” so the plant can poison the air to its heart’s delight
* The company has been granted special court privileges by the state legislature, like the ability to make numerous appeals of unfavorable rulings in a single case
* The town’s Village Board of Trustees has been using eminent domain to expel obstinate homeowners, forcing them to “sell at a price determined by the village.” They’ve been able to do so by decreeing the 2,800-acre area around the plant “blighted,” a designation typically reserved for property that is “detrimental to the public health, safety, or welfare,” but which the board has extended to include property that “impairs or arrests the sound growth of the community”
All this, when the U.S. economy is already minting some 200,000 jobs a month, was designed to create 13,000 new, middle-class manufacturing jobs, as Foxconn and Trump .. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/foxconn-wisconsin-investment .. promised. Except, as Kaufman reports, the Foxconn deal will actually create far fewer jobs, and most of them will not be of the blue-collar variety.
. . . the company recently changed the type of factory it plans to build, downsizing to a highly automated plant that will only require three thousand employees, ninety per cent of them “knowledge workers,” such as engineers, programmers, and designers. Almost all of the assembly work will be done by robots. Terry Gou, Foxconn’s chairman, has said he plans to replace eighty percent of Foxconn’s global workforce with “Foxbots” in the next five to ten years. The company still says it will hire thirteen thousand employees in Wisconsin, but it has fallen short of similar promises in Brazil, India, and Pennsylvania, among other places. Foxconn has already replaced sixty thousand workers who were earning roughly $2.50 an hour in China. Even the expansion of I-94, which is being done to accommodate Foxconn (and being paid for by Wisconsin taxpayers) reflects Foxconn’s faith in automation: the company and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation have discussed dedicating lanes to self-driving cars and trucks.
The problems go on and on. Because the plant will be located 20 miles from the Illinois border, many employees will likely not actually be Wisconsin residents. There are concerns from local environmental groups regarding what will become of the water supply .. https://journaltimes.com/opinion/editorial/journal-times-editorial-foxconn-and-our-water-supply/article_1da26180-0967-5e5e-937e-ae84bab5b69b.html . Billions in taxpayer money will be shifted away from places they could be used—like on the state’s crumbling roads or understaffed rural schools. All this, again, to create very few jobs, in the scheme of things. According to calculations by two former University of Wisconsin business-school professors, “if Foxconn’s taxpayer subsidies were given to random entrepreneurs, the money would generate more than ninety thousand jobs.”
The Foxconn deal is, in other words, a lot like many of the other “incredible“ feats brought to America by the mind behind Trump University and the United States Football League and the Carrier plant that laid off more than 600 workers and the Ford factory that got moved to China and the trillion-dollar corporate tax cut that has mysteriously failed to trickle down. Incredible, indeed.
WATCH - Watch the 2024 Met Gala Red Carpet Replay - Presented by eBay and Porsche
In a statement, a company representative said, “Foxconn is fully committed to our investment of at least $10 billion in building our state-of-the-art Wisconsin Valley Science and Technology Park in Wisconsin and to meeting all contractual obligations with the relevant government agencies.”
**
You’ll never believe it but Trump has gone easy on corporate wrongdoing
We know, it’s a total shock! Per *The New York Times ..https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/us/trump-sec-doj-corporate-penalties.html .. :*
-----
In the final months of the Obama administration, Walmart was under pressure from federal officials to pay nearly $1 billion and accept a guilty plea to resolve a foreign bribery investigation.
Barclays faced demands that it pay nearly $7 billion to settle civil claims that it had sold toxic mortgage investments that helped fuel the 2008 financial crisis, and the Royal Bank of Scotland was ensnared in a criminal investigation over its role in the crisis.
The three corporate giants complained that the Obama administration was being unreasonable and stood their ground, according to people briefed on the investigations. After President Trump took office, they looked to his administration for a more sympathetic ear—and got one.
Federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission have yet to charge Walmart, and the Justice Department reached a much lower settlement agreement with Barclays in March, for $2 billion. R.B.S. paid a civil penalty, but escaped criminal charges altogether.
-----
According to analysis by the Times comparing the last 20 months of the Obama administration with the first 20 months of the Trump administration, there has been: a 62 percent plunge in penalties imposed and ill-gotten gains ordered returned by the Securities and Exchange Commission; a 72 percent drop in corporate penalties from criminal prosecutions at the Justice Department; and just one-quarter the amount of penalties imposed on the banking industry by the S.E.C. But while Brandon Garrett, a Duke University professor, told the Times the the sharp falloff has led to the sense among companies that “there’s no reason to fear prosecution for committing serious corporate crimes,” Trump’s S.E.C. is shocked and offended by the notion it is going easy on corporate America. “The article’s conclusion that enforcement of the federal securities laws has flagged rests on deeply flawed methodology,” Stephanie Avakian and Steven Peikin, the heads of enforcement, said in a statement. “As the thorough analysis in our annual report makes clear, the division of enforcement’s performance, effectiveness, and activity level during our tenure compares favorably with any period in the commission’s history.”
**
Under Armour will no longer allow employees to use company funds at strip clubs
Meaning, yes, there was a time in which swiping corporate credit cards for lap dances and the like was standard company practice .. https://www.wsj.com/articles/under-armours-metoo-moment-no-more-strip-clubs-on-company-dime-1541450209 :
---
Over the years, executives and employees of the sports-apparel company, including Chairman and Chief Executive Kevin Plank, went with athletes or co-workers to strip clubs after some corporate and sporting events, and the company often paid for the visits of many attendees, people familiar with the matter said. . . . In a Feb. 20 e-mail to staff, Under Armour’s finance chief, David Bergman, said the company would no longer reimburse certain expenses, including adult entertainment, limousine services and gambling, according to the e-mail, which was reviewed by the Journal.
One venue popular with some employees was the Scores club, featuring nude dancers, near downtown Baltimore and a short drive from Under Armour headquarters. On some visits, employees charged hundreds of dollars there to the company, according to some of the people familiar with the matter.
---
In a statement, Plank told The Wall Street Journal: “Our teammates deserve to work in a respectful and empowering environment. We believe that there is systemic inequality in the global workplace and we will embrace this moment to accelerate the ongoing meaningful cultural transformation that is already under way at Under Armour. We can and will do better.”
**
Goldman Sachs will change fewer lives this year
The firm, which is currently dealing the fallout of two former employees being indicted on criminal charges tied to the alleged theft of $4.5 billion from Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, is inducting a historically tiny number of people into what was once essentially the Brotherhood of F--k You Money, and has now been downgraded to the Brotherhood of A Lot of Money:
---
The Wall Street firm is set to name its smallest class of new partners in years this week, according to people familiar with the matter. It’s the first crop of promotions under Chief Executive David Solomon, who aims to keep Goldman’s upper ranks exclusive and compensate for a recent influx of outside hires.
Fewer than 65 people are likely to get the nod, the people said. That would be the smallest class since 1998, when Goldman was still a private company, and fewer than the 84 promoted two years ago.
Being a Goldman partner once meant tying one’s personal fortunes to the firm’s. From its founding in 1869 until its 1999 initial public offering, Goldman’s partners funded its balance sheet, sharing profits and shouldering losses.
Today the title is largely symbolic—partners own less than 5 percent of the firm—but the every-other-year selection process remains a central part of Goldman’s identity, a way to reward and motivate employees and guard the firm’s culture.
**
Area man’s lips move, ergo area man tells lies
Gotta get the good ones in before voters head to the polls!
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1059539625344143361
Elsewhere!
Wall Street Moguls Predict the Dems Will Take the House, the G.O.P.
Gains in the Senate, and They Remain Life’s Great Winners (The Hive)
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/wall-street-predictions-midterms
Goldman Says World Economy “Past the Best” (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-05/goldman-says-world-economy-past-the-best-as-2019-looks-softer
Inside a secretive billionaire club’s plan to help Democrats take Congress (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/02/2018-elections-outside-money-democrats-democrat-alliance-soros-steyer-956032
No Sleep Till Brexit: The City Scrambles to Deal with Quitting the E.U. (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-01/no-sleep-till-brexit-the-city-scrambles-to-deal-with-quitting-the-eu?srnd=premium
More -- https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/donald-trump-foxconn-scam
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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