title:  Trump-Touted Wisconsin Deal Forces Taxpayers To Shell Out $3 Billion
text: Donald Trump is so desperate to take credit for job creation that he ignored the fact that the deal he bragged about takes money away from every person in Wisconsin.On Wednesday, Trump made a big deal about a Chinese company known as Foxconn building a factory in Wisconsin that could create up to 3,000 jobs.Thank you Foxconn, for investing $10 BILLION DOLLARS with the potential for up to 13K new jobs in Wisconsin! MadeInTheUSA?? pic.twitter.com/jJghVeb63s  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2017In addition, Trump claimed that the deal would not have happened had he not been elected, and went on to suck up to Foxconn chairman Terry Gou. His great company has seen our you know, you see exactly what I m saying our administration s work to remove job-killing regulations he s been watching to institute Buy American and Hire American, and all of those policies, and to pursue the steps necessary to revitalize American industry, including repealing and replacing Obamacare we better get that done, fellas, please. It should be pointed out that Foxconn was already planning to build a factory in the United States long before Trump ever considered running for president.But if Trump really wants to take credit, that means he is also taking credit for Republicans screwing over the people of Wisconsin to get the factory to come to their state.You see, in exchange for Foxconn choosing Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers and Governor Scott Walker approved a $3 billion subsidy for the company. According to Bloomberg, that amounts to taking $519 from every man, woman, and child in Wisconsin to fund what the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel points out  would total more than the combined yearly state funding used to operate the University of Wisconsin System and the state s prison system. And let s remember that we are talking about a private company that is already worth billions. Foxconn does not need billions of dollars of government subsidies to expand. They have the money to do it themselves. This amounts to nothing more than Foxconn holding the people of Wisconsin hostage and Republicans letting them and complying with their demands.And that is especially disastrous for Wisconsin since Foxconn is known for promising investments and not delivering.As Bloomberg reported,Three years ago, Gou signed a deal with the government of Jakarta, Indonesia s capital and its biggest city, to invest $1 billion and employ local workers to make electronics. That never happened. Neither did a $30 million high-tech factory in Pennyslvania that was announced a year earlier. Just this past year, Foxconn is reported to have pledged investments of $5 billion in India; $3.65 billion in Kunshan, China; and $8.8 billion in Guangzhou. It s too early to know if those sums will ever be spent, but including Wisconsin, the tally now stands at $27.5 billion of commitments. That s more than Hon Hai [Foxconn s flagship company] has spent in the last 23 years.So while Trump is busy touting the deal to make himself look good, he is doing so at the expense of Wisconsin taxpayers, many of whom now have to worry about how they will get by after paying Foxconn s ransom.Featured image via Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images