Foxconn has its nuts and bolts engineering, manufacturing R&D, product testing, etc all in China. Taiwan is more the business/engineering leads that work directly with the technology companies in those countries like HP, Lenovo, etc.
Foxconn has R&D and everything for Chinese companies when they build things like ATMs or other products. Huawai has R&D for phones (as I understand it), but both businesses have other industries they do work for. I know when we did some more unique systems outside the traditional business scope we worked directly with Foxconn’s Chinese R&D team instead of Taiwan.
Maybe it’s just that from what I have heard working on cell phones is more unforgiving with worse hours and practices. I don’t have any personal experience with that, but I know the Apple engineers I met spent a lot more time in China than I did - and that the production volumes are comically high. I really don’t know much about the actual phone side of the industry.
Huawei’s main R&D is in networking gear and an increasing amount of UK network infrastructure runs on it. They have an advantage over Apple, in fact, in that they are vertically integrated over the entire stack. I’m sure this is why the US sees them as a threat.
Fortunately China isn’t monolithic and with competitors like the group that includes Oppo, and Xiaomi, you don’t have the rather unhealthy situation you have in the US with one giant company dominating phone hardware. But I can understand the phone business must be horrible to work in, as it is so intensely competitive and with a single mis-step like the Samsung battery problem costing billions.
Is there a still more interesting story behind this? When a politician does something that seems to lose public money, somewhere someone related to that politician is usually getting it.
I am quite sure that nobody would ever start an account on BoingBoing with a “Chinese” nick apparently solely for the purpose of defending a deal between Wisconsin and Foxconn.
I’m just giving my anecdote having worked with Foxconn for years, I honestly don’t know a lot about Huawei outside phones. I know there is was a lot of refocusing on network gear a little while ago at my workplace, but people got out of networking gear because the profit margins are much lower than other tech products so it’s not shocking that a networking company could expand and threaten on the US tech giants.
If its a Tax Break most people don’t see it as a government payment
If you make people choose between a plan that hire people and pay them 65,000$ or a tax break for a company that make each job cost 67,000 $ they will chose the later ( notice i didn’t promise the job will pay the worker 67,000$ )
Note - the location for the facility has not yet been determined. It is likely that Foxconn will opt for a location near the Wisconsin-Illinois border, drawing workers from the more populous Chicago suburbs rather than from rural Wisconsin.
You’re partially right - I did not start an account on this BBS for the sole purpose of defending a deal between Foxconn and the state of Wisconsin. I started it to post a comment correcting a statement in the article claiming that Foxconn is a Chinese company. I find it strange that this is the third time I’ve had to make this point in this thread, and the second time to you directly
And FYI - Hung is the anglicized spelling of the Taiwanese surname more commonly spelled Hong in China. So on that point, you are quite wrong.
If they build the plant in southeastern Wisconsin counties Racine or Kenosha as indicated, they are in the Lake Michigan water basin and don’t need permission from the other states.
Check a little further down in you Wikipedia citation and you’ll find an example of the city of Waukesha and their effort to seek Lake Michigan water even though they are outside of the Great Lakes basin. Yes, because of their location, Waukesha went through a lengthy process, required by law, to obtain approval by the compact, which it did last year.
But if Foxcon acquires property within the basin, there is NO obligation to seek approval from the Great Lakes Compact.
I don’t really understand how they would stop anything. Not only are the Great Lakes controlled by the GOP, the Supreme Court case sided with the infringing state the one time it was really challenged.
I think you are reading it backwards. Any new or increased withdrawals from the lake (relative to 2008 numbers) need to be approved by the Council. The only way that a new Foxconn plant can avoid review under the Great Lakes Compact is if the local area offsets the increase in withdrawal. So if Kenosha or Racine have an extra 490 M gallons of water each year (typical consumption for a plant like the one proposed), then you’re right. Maybe the citizenry of the lucky city can get water from Flint, MI to drink?
One could argue that this is a major problem with the modern division of labor, that far too many of us specialize in the very narrow and specific (myself included, since I too, hold a PhD in my field of study), and there are too few people who hold a greater set of more practical knowledge. But as you note, that’s likely deliberate.
What I never understood about Brownbeck’s “grand experiment” is why you would shift from income taxes to consumption (sales) taxes when your largest population center is on the border with a lower tax state.
Jeez, I’m slow.