By COLLEEN LONG and SEUNG MIN KIM (Associated Press)
STURTEVANT, Wisc. (AP) — President Joe Biden criticized Donald Trump for an unsuccessful project from the previous administration that was intended to create thousands of new jobs in southeastern Wisconsin. He also highlighted new economic investments under his leadership that are coming to the same location.
The battleground state will now host a new data center from Microsoft, and the company's president credited the Biden administration's economic policies for enabling the new investments. This provided another point of comparison between Biden and Trump, as Trump had promised a $10 billion investment by Foxconn that never materialized.
“In fact, he came here with your senator, Ron Johnson, holding a golden shovel, promising to build the eighth wonder of the world. You kidding me?” Biden told the crowd of about 300 people, who clapped and cheered loudly as he spoke. “They dug a hole with those golden shovels, and then they fell into it.”
Biden also mentioned that 100 homes were destroyed for the project, which wasted hundreds of millions of dollars, and added a jab: “Foxconn turned out to be just that — a con. Go figure.”
Biden was in Sturtevant, in Racine County, to promote the $3.3 billion Microsoft data center, which the Democratic president said will employ about 2,300 union construction workers to build it and then 2,000 permanent employees to staff it.
Microsoft’s president Brad Smith said in an interview with The Associated Press that Microsoft had a “steadfast commitment to under-promising and over-delivering” and praised the Biden administration and the state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, for economic policies that set the stage for the developments announced Wednesday.
Biden made sure to take credit and repeatedly criticize Trump, arguing that Trump embraced the same type of “trickle-down economics” that Biden dislikes and failed to revive domestic manufacturing during his four years in the White House.