On Tuesday, Donald Trump pledged, if re-elected in November, to create special economic zones on federal lands to bring in foreign factories and thus “steal” jobs from other countries. Promises made in the past and which, under his presidency, between 2017 and 2021, created far more illusions than jobs in several corners of the country, such as in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin.
As strange as it is fascinating, the 30-meter-high spherical building planted in the middle of fallow farmland in the village of Mount Pleasant was supposed to become a symbol of renewed prosperity. In 2018, in this half-rural, half-urban community of 2,700 souls located south of Milwaukee, Donald Trump had promised nothing less than the “eighth wonder of the world” when he threw a first sod of earth supposed to begin the construction of a huge Foxconn factory.
On 2,400 acres, the equivalent of 1,800 football fields, the Taiwanese giant landed to launch the production of so-called smart televisions. Investment? Ten billion dollars, with the creation of 13,000 jobs — both blue-collar and white-collar — and the promise of tax breaks of some 3 billion by the local government.
But when Kelly Gallaher, chairwoman of the Racine County Democratic Party, now walks past the big glass and metal ball along Route H, it’s a completely different story. “That’s typical Donald Trump,” says the activist, who has for years decried what has become known in the region as the “Foxconn fiasco.” “He came here with big promises, big fanfare, and then it completely blew up.”
More than six years after the photo showing the former president and his golden shovel, the inhabitants of Mount Pleasant are measuring the mirage he left behind. An illusion that is revealed on immense fields acquired by the local government, at the cost of the forced relocation of local residents, where the buildings of the promised factory have barely grown.
At best, Foxconn claims to have delivered a little over 1,000 jobs to date. It has revised its production plan, for telephone screens rather than television screens, without having released any for the moment. The company is mainly looking for tenants for the few buildings it has erected. “It’s Microsoft that is here now,” assures an employee crossed a few days ago on the access road opened through the fields to lead to the sphere. “I think they are setting up a data center.”
He came here making great promises, with drums and trumpets, and then it all went completely wrong.
Making the story resonate
In the rather Republican county of Racine, the failure of the ” deal ” Donald Trump’s partnership with the Taiwanese giant has been a part of the current election campaign for several months. Democrats want to convince voters not to place blind trust in the populist.
They are also looking to make the narrative resonate well beyond Mount Pleasant. Especially since Wisconsin is a swing state that was narrowly won by the billionaire in 2016, narrowly recaptured by Joe Biden in 2020 and which Kamala Harris badly needs to win the election next November.
“If Democrats talk about this enough, it could have a positive impact on the outcome of the vote,” predicted Scott, a retired electrician we met on the grounds of his Mount Pleasant home. “Donald Trump has not brought anything good to our country, and we need to make that known.” At the end of the Republican’s presidency, the region saw its unemployment rate climb to more than 15 percent, before falling back to a lower level of 4 percent.
“It’s not just a local story. The rest of the state knows it, too,” M.me Gallaher.
Last August, in Chicago, a video broadcast during the Democratic National Convention summed up the nature of the fiasco in Mount Pleasant, a bedroom community without history until the former president arrived there. The document recalled in passing that, under the presidency of Joe Biden, a new investment was announced there by the giant Microsoft to fill the space left empty by Donald Trump’s unfulfilled promises.
“The Democrats came in to clean up after Trump,” says the local party chairwoman. “The village was on the verge of bankruptcy because of the expense of buying the land and bringing in the company. But the tax revenue that Foxconn was supposed to generate never materialized. That created a lot of tension here that we’re only just starting to recover from.”
While hoping to attract customers to his yard sale, Dave, an independent contractor in town, says that “times have been tough here for business for the last two years.” But the Trump-leaning Dave isn’t ready to blame the Republican. “He may have been there when Foxconn was launched, but at the same time, Joe Biden is in the White House now and he has to take some of the blame, too.”
He adds: “It’s happening now, but this story probably started a long time ago. Probably under Barack Obama.” Foxconn’s arrival in Mount Pleasant had been announced with great fanfare from the White House by Donald Trump in July 2017, a year before the first shovel of earth was broken.
“We need to bring factories back to the United States,” says Max Krembs, an “undecided” from the village. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen with Kamala Harris.”
Limited impact
According to Andy Havron, an educational advisor at a local school, Mount Pleasant’s setbacks with Foxconn and Donald Trump are unlikely to have much effect on the electoral scoreboards in this county of 106,000 voters, which gave a comfortable majority to the Republican in 2020. “People have already made their choice and this story is not going to change anything,” predicts the young father, a former Republican turned Democrat and, for his part, delighted by the arrival of Kamala Harris in the race.
The entry of the vice president at the head of the Democratic ticket has radically changed the curve of voting intentions in Wisconsin: Kamala Harris has been ahead of her Republican rival in the polls since July 23, just two days after Joe Biden announced his withdrawal in the middle of the summer. A recent poll by the MassINC Polling Group released last Monday gave her a 7-point lead over the populist.
“We remain in a state of urgency and hypervigilance because there is something terrifying about this campaign,” Gallaher says. “I remember Barack Obama’s, where there was a lot of excitement — and you feel that again this year. But back then, the prospect of John McCain or Mitt Romney winning was not as much of a threat to American democracy as it is today with Donald Trump.”
“We’re campaigning against him not just to stop him from coming here and making promises about job creation that he won’t keep, but to save democracy,” she adds. “And that’s not a metaphor, that’s really our daily work.”
This report was financed with the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund- The Duty .