December 20, 2019 — This issue brief explains why both the state and Foxconn should want to renegotiate the contract that spells out the terms for nearly $3 billion of state subsidies for the manufacturer. This issue brief examines why a new contract is needed, and also considers possible explanations for snags in the process of renegotiating the deal.
May 2, 2019 — Should Wisconsin seek to renegotiate the deal it made with Foxconn? This blog post explains why a new deal could benefit both Foxconn and the state, and it also examines why actually reaching a deal that is better for all involved could be very difficult.
February 21, 2019 — Mounting evidence creates serious doubts that Foxconn will build a factory in Racine County that comes anywhere close to the consider employment levels that Foxconn promised. As policymakers and the public consider what to do next, here are five key things that people need to understand about the contract.
September 19, 2018 — September 18 marked the one-year anniversary of the bill authorizing massive subsidies for a Foxconn plant in southeast Wisconsin. Although we still don’t know many specifics about the plant that will be built and the new jobs that will result, we have learned a lot in the last year, and the current picture is considerably different than what we had been led to believe a year ago.
January 29, 2018 –A new Legislative Fiscal Bureau document reveals that the potential costs of public assistance for Foxconn have risen to about $4.5 billion. Our analysis of the LFB figures shows that more than $1 billion of those costs has no direct tie to job creation.
August 17, 2017 — Using two less optimistic sets of assumptions about the jobs created by Foxconn, our calculations show that the proposed Foxconn subsidies might never be offset by increased state tax revenue.
August 16, 2017 — When the Legislative Fiscal Bureau wrote that it would take until at least 2043 for Wisconsin to break even on the Foxconn subsidies, they were summarizing an analysis that used the “best case” assumptions. Using the same methodology and most of the same assumptions, a new Wisconsin Budget Project analysis calculates that other scenarios within the range described by Foxconn could mean that the cost of the state subsidies would not be recovered until 2050 or 2058.