SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
President Trump says one of the key goals of his various tariffs is to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. During his first term in office, the president took credit for getting Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, to open a huge factory in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. Chuck Quirmbach of member station WUWM in Milwaukee joins us. Chuck, thanks so much for being with us.
CHUCK QUIRMBACH, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.
SIMON: President Trump and state officials were at the groundbreaking of the Foxconn plant . It received State of Wisconsin tax breaks, too. How are things going with Foxconn?
QUIRMBACH: Well, the promise back then was that Foxconn would eventually employ 13,000 people here in exchange for up to nearly $3 billion in tax breaks. After the groundbreaking, Foxconn soon started to scale back its projections, saying business conditions had changed for the larger computer and television screens they originally promised to make.
SIMON: So how many people actually work there now?
QUIRMBACH: Well, according to state figures released last December, Foxconn employed about 1,100 full-time workers here last year and invested about $25 million in its local operations. In return, it got $9 million in state tax credits. The now Democratic governor, Tony Evers, says he's glad to have Foxconn in Wisconsin. But other Democrats here still ridicule the Republicans' original jobs promises. One thing to note - Donald Trump has won Racine County, where the Foxconn plant is located, by a few percentage points all three times he's been on the ballot here.
SIMON: And, Chuck, with the president now leading the way on tariffs on many imported goods, I wonder what business groups in Wisconsin say about the possibility of adding jobs at Foxconn or other manufacturers.
QUIRMBACH: It's an important issue. Wisconsin has one of the higher percentages of workers still employed in manufacturing. The state says it's about 15% of the nonfarm workforce, or 460,000 people. There's a range of responses to the tariffs controversy. One local business official I spoke with basically said no one knows what's going to happen at factories and how long any tariffs will stay on. Others willing to speak are more measured. Dale Kooyenga is president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. He was a Republican legislator when the Foxconn deal passed here. Kooyenga is somewhat worried about higher tariffs, noting Wisconsin has a lot of what's called advanced manufacturing. And that's where items made overseas by lower-wage workers are put into more sophisticated products here.
DALE KOOYENGA: The problem with some of these tariffs is that it rolls up into the manufacturing cost. And it's not only the cost. This is $600 billion, which is the largest tax increase in U.S. history if you consider tariff taxes, which nearly all economists do. But it's also the uncertainty.
QUIRMBACH: Kooyenga there, quoting Trump administration figures for annual tariff revenue for the U.S. And it's a dollar amount that's, of course, in dispute. On the other hand, Kooyenga contends tariffs have helped the U.S. steel industry. And if Trump tariffs hold, he says business groups will just have to factor in that cost in their pitch to get manufacturers to Wisconsin.
SIMON: Chuck Quirmbach of member station WUWM in Milwaukee. Thanks so much.
QUIRMBACH: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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