Biden trolls Trump by unveiling new $3bn Microsoft facility on site of ex-president’s failed FoxConn plant

Nearly six years after then-president Donald Trump promised Racine, Wisconsin residents that the “eighth wonder of the world” would rise there in the form of a chip factory operated by Taiwanese semiconductor giant Foxconn, President Joe Biden delivered on the promise of a new facility with long-term employment prospects for Wisconsinites as he announced the construction of a $3.3bn artificial intelligence data centre on the site where the planned Foxconn plant never materialised.

The data centre, which will be owned and operated by Microsoft, is set to employ 2,300 unionised workers during the construction phase of the project, and will eventually need 2,000 permanent workers at the facility.

The location of the facility, Racine, was once a Badger State manufacturing powerhouse until globalisation and slowdowns in manufacturing led to massive job losses there.

Mr Trump, who promised an industrial renaissance during his time in office, appeared in Racine in June 2018 to announce the construction of a Foxconn semiconductor fabrication facility that he claimed would create 13,000 jobs.

But that planned fabrication facility never came to fruition, leaving a vacant site and memories of broken promises from Mr Trump’s visit six years ago.

Mr Biden blamed “trickle-down economics” favoured by Mr Trump and his advisers for the decline in employment in Racine and places like it as he recalled how the ex-president had brought a gold-coloured shovel to break ground on the facility in a highly-publicised announcement alongside Republican Senator Ron Johnson and then-governor Scott Walker.

While more than $500 million in state funds were spent on purchasing and preparing the site, Foxconn’s promised investment never actually materialised.

“Look what happened — they dug a hole, those golden shovels and then they fell into it,” he said, adding that “hundreds of homes” had been “bought and bulldozed” using Wisconsinites’ tax dollars for “a project that never happened”.

“Foxconn turned out to be just that — a con,” he said. “Go figure”.

Mr Biden continued, noting how 83,500 had actually left the Badger State during Mr Trump’s term, compared with the 178,000 jobs that have been created there since he took office in 2021.

“We’re gonna create more here in Racine, big time,” he said.

He added that his administration’s “Investing in America agenda” has “created $866 billion in private sector investment nationwide” had added hundreds of thousands of jobs to the US economy, “building new semiconductor factories, electric vehicles and battery factories and so much more”.

Mr Biden also promised that the job growth seen on his watch thus far is “only the beginning”

“We’re seeing the great American comeback story all across Wisconsin. And quite frankly, the entire country. The bottom line is we’re doing what’s always worked in this country, giving people a fair shot, leaving nobody behind and growing the economy from the bottom up — not the top down,” he said, just before closing his remarks to chants of “four more years” from a boisterous crowd of union workers.

The president’s appearance in Wisconsin was a direct rebuke to the ex-president, who on Wednesday was expected to spend the day at his Palm Beach, Florida home meeting with supporters who purchased Trump-branded Non-Fungible Tokens while on a day-long break from his New York criminal trial on charges of allegedly falsifying business records.