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The New York Times (may be pay-walled) reports that Terry Gou, the CEO of Foxconn has confirmed rumours aired in December to the effect that the company is considering building an additional factory in the United States. Yahoo Finance UK says that the factory, if built, "could create about 30,000-50,000 jobs." The South China Morning Post reports that the facility, expected to cost more than $7 billion, would make dot-matrix displays (such as used in television sets and mobile phones) under the Sharp name. Mr. Gou remarked that:
While it is difficult to have a clear analysis of the economic outlook for this year, due to looming uncertainties, three factors can be seen as clues. First, the rise of protectionism is inevitable. Secondly, the trend of politics serving the economy is clearly defined, and thirdly, the proportion of real economy is getting increasingly bigger.
Speaking in November, Gou had called on the incoming U.S. leaders to refrain from protectionist policies, The China Post had reported.
Additional coverage:
Related:
Foxconn Plans to Replace Nearly All Human Workers With Robots in Some Factories
Foxconn Acquires Sharp at a Lower Price Than Previously Agreed
Sharp Accepts $6.25 Billion Takeover Bid from Foxconn, but Foxconn is Wary of Debt
Softbank to Invest $50 Billion in the US
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @09:46PM
Foxconn already has 10 "lights out" (fully automated) production lines in China. [digitimes.com]
They have officially announced that their goal is to make all of their factories fully automated.
It would be dreaming to believe that they would build a brand new factory, in a country with some of the highest labor costs in the world, that was not maximally automated.
If this factory is gets built it will probably employ on the order of 50-100 people full-time. You need a couple of security guards, a robot repair crew and some general purpose monitors and troubleshooters and that's about it.
And that's the problem with all of these new factories. Its all about automation. Even Trump's signature deal with Carrier, where he saved ~750 jobs in exchange for $7 million in tax dollars from the Indiana government is actually about automation. The Carrier CEO literally came out and said [businessinsider.com] that he's taking the $7M plus $14M of the company's own money and investing it in automation. Mexicans won't be stealing those 750 jobs, but in a few years robots will.
Meanwhile the US economy creates a net 200,000 new jobs per month [bls.gov] (and a gross of ~5M new jobs per month [bls.gov]). So unless Trump plans to be making deals like this every waking second 365 days a year, he's going to have a negligble impact on jobs.
MAGAFR -- Make America Great Again for Robots.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by lgw on Tuesday January 24 2017, @11:19PM
In a world of increasing automation, all the talk of unskilled manufacturing jobs in the US is just hot air. We all know there won't be any in a few decades. Still, better to have the robot factories on US soil than otherwise.
Skilled manufacturing, OTOH, is a different beast. There are over a million skilled manufacturing jobs sitting unfilled in the US right now. If Trump wants to make a real dent in unemployment, he'd focus on the problem of providing training for those jobs. Those might not be forever (but what is), but skilled work seems likely to be with us for at least the rest of the working life of the currently unemployed.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @11:23PM
If Trump wants to make a real dent in unemployment, he'd focus on the problem of providing training for those jobs.
Haven't you heard?
He's been working on that problem for years.
Trump University.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @10:58PM
The 10 Dogs and 9 Bones analogy [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [alternet.org]
"The way I go about demonstrating that fallacy is a dogs-and-bones example."
What's needed is Joe Average spending money into the economy and goosing The Multiplier Effect. [wikipedia.org]
He can't do that without a job.
What's needed is infrastructure spending.
...on a yuuuge scale.
That already worked once to pull USA out of an economic depression within 4 years (1933 - 1937).
Back then, the plan was called The New Deal.
Franklin Roosevelt and his advisor John Maynard Keynes are who you have to thank for the USA not still being in a depression.
Today, we are in need of people who are that wise.
Instead, a yuuuge number of you folks (among the small number who bothered to show up at the polls at all) chose Donnie Tiny Hands.
...especially in the states that have the biggest unemployment problems.
In that same presidential race, Jill Stein of the Green Party offered A Green New Deal.
You folks rejected[1] her/that and here we are, still in the doldrums.
[1] This assumes that you bothered to become informed and were even slightly aware of Dr. Stein and her ideas--rather than plopping down in front of your TeeVee and allowing Lamestream Media to fill your head with horse-race nonsense and watching The Orange Clown get his $5B of free media.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 25 2017, @12:38AM
Yes, the plan, that's been in the works since 2014, has always been a maximally automated facility to take advantage of cheaper shipping.
It was in the news at the time, maybe even posted here. Foxconn Weighs Plan for U.S. Plant (Jan. 26, 2014) [wsj.com]
So I guess the news is that they continue to mull.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 25 2017, @01:41AM
They were weighing, now they're mulling.
I love how the article is almost exactly 3 years old, although I couldn't confirm the automation details due to the WSJ paywall.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2017, @08:07AM
So its not just me.
I used to be able to go right through their paywall due to all my privacy extension in firefox.
But in the last month I've hit it a couple of times.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 25 2017, @09:25AM
My best bet for WSJ has been to search the text and try to find some other site reprinting the story. This is all I got:
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/01/27/foxconn-considers-high-tech-manufacturing-plant-in-usa.html [foxnews.com]
http://macdailynews.com/2014/01/26/apple-assembler-foxconn-considering-building-large-screen-display-manufacturing-plant-in-u-s-a/ [macdailynews.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday January 25 2017, @03:42PM
"There are 10 lights-out (fully automated) production lines at some factories, including table one in Chengdu, AIO (all-in-one) PC and LCD monitor lines at a factory in Chongqing, western China, and a CNC line in Zhengzhou, Dai indicated."
https://9to5mac.com/2016/12/30/foxconn-fully-automated-factories-robots-automated-production/
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Wednesday January 25 2017, @02:53AM
(Score: 3, Touché) by Gaaark on Thursday January 26 2017, @12:29AM
No, the buggy whip makers were all forced to be dominatrixes!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---