Foxconn is dangling a new $10 billion display-making factory before job-hungry state governors with plans to decide on a location in July, said CEO Terry Gou.
“The U.S. state governors’ sincerity and confidence to attract investment, the executive power in their policies to return manufacturing to the U.S., is beyond my imagination,” Gou said.
Foxconn is the world’s largest contract electronics maker, best known for building Apple’s iPhone in vast factories in China.
The company has very limited operations in the United States. Now that changes, said Guo.
“This time we go to America, it’s not just to build a factory, but to move our entire supply chain there,” Gou told shareholders at the annual shareholders meeting on Thursday June 21, providing no specific details.
Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina are possible locations, Gou told reporters after the meeting.
The plant will create jobs, but far fewer than the million people it employs in China where labor is cheaper. The U.S. plant will rely on automation.
The Taiwanese company has been eyeing U.S. investments for some time and Gou had previously said the company hoped to spend $7 billion to build displays in the United States, the second largest market for televisions in the world.
The move comes as President Donald Trump continues to decry America’s trade deficit and the “terrible, terrible trade deals,” that have helped create it.
Trump has called for firms to build more products in the United States.
Foxconn already has operations in Pennsylvania but has yet to build the factory there that Guo pledged in 2013.
Gou said that agreement was still pending.
