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.
“Folks, during the previous administration, my predecessor made promises, which he broke more than kept, left a lot of people behind in communities like Racine,” Biden said. “On my watch, we make promises, and we keep promises.”
Trump’s campaign didn’t address Foxconn, but the Republican former president often says the economy was in a much better position when he was in office and will be again should he win in 2024. Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley said Biden’s trip was an attempt to “save face in Racine County as Wisconsinites feel the pain of Bidenomics.”
“Manufacturing has stalled, family farms are closing down, and costs are increasing for everything from electricity and gas to food and housing,” Whatley said. “It’s no wonder why Biden is losing in Wisconsin and battleground states across the country: his policies have failed and people want President Trump back in office.”
Foxconn, however, stated that its current Wisconsin operation is a big help to the company. The company has put in about $1 billion in the state and now has over 1,000 employees at Foxconn Wisconsin.
Wisconsin Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, who represents the district where Biden was visiting Wednesday, said the Microsoft announcement was good for workers. However, Steil said Biden is using it to conceal his record on failing to control rising inflation and said Biden was taking credit for private-sector work in the area that started a decade ago, a lot of it for the Foxconn project.
As for Trump, he was back in Florida on his day off from his New York hush money trial on Wednesday, meeting at his Mar-a-Lago club with people who, as part of a promotion, bought digital trading card NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to publicly discuss it. The “MugShot Edition” NFTs featured images of Trump as a cowboy, with lightning coming out of his hands, walking by the U.S. Capitol and taking the place of Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial.
After his speech in Sturtevant, Biden was making a campaign stop to speak with Black voters about the stakes of the November election.
Racine County is a critical location. All but five of the past 33 winning presidential candidates carried it. Trump is one of the five. He won Racine County but lost the election. Biden was the first Democrat since 1976 to win Wisconsin without carrying Racine County.
The race is expected to be close in Wisconsin, where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point. Biden won by just under 21,000 votes in 2020. A recent Marquette University poll showed that Republican voters in Wisconsin are somewhat more enthusiastic about the election than Democrats.
Biden’s trip to Wisconsin, his fourth of the year and 11th as president, came as his reelection also sharpened its outreach to minority voters on the airwaves. It announced the launch of a new, $14 million digital and television blitz that follows the $30 million effort that began after his State of the Union address in early March.
One of the new ads in the latest ad campaign focuses on Trump’s failed yet determined push to repeal the Affordable Care Act. A significant portion of the $14 million campaign starting Wednesday will go into Black and Hispanic media, as well as Asian American print and radio, according to the campaign.
By the end of May, Biden’s reelection effort will have more than 200 offices and roughly 500 staff members in place, according to Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground director. Those figures include offices in areas that traditionally haven’t seen investments by Democrats in pockets of Michigan, Arizona and North Carolina.
While Microsoft has been increasing artificial intelligence-driven data center construction all over the world, “this one is more important than many because there is more land and ultimately access to power available,” said Smith, who as a child lived in the area where the center is being built.
Once running, however, even the most powerful data centers usually have a small group of full-time employees to oversee them. Microsoft will have around 500, drawing from highly skilled workers in the area between Milwaukee and Chicago, Smith said.
However, he stated that the larger impact for the region would be in the technology itself and broader investments in preparing the Upper Midwest for its effects.
“This is about the competitiveness of manufacturing in places like Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, and Ohio,” Smith said.
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Kim reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price in New York, Scott Bauer in Wisconsin and Matt O’
