Will Wisconsin’s India trip be great?

The project is fantastical: A $19 billion investment into semiconductor and display-panel sectors, with the creation of 100,000 jobs in a state with little experience in technology manufacturing.
If voters and taxpayers in India’s northwestern Gujarat state are excited about this “landmark investment” they ought to read up on recent Wisconsin history.
The US state bought into a similar pipe dream in 2017 when then-President Donald Trump teamed up with then-Governor Scott Walker to lure Foxconn Technology Group, whose Taipei-listed flagship is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. The Taiwanese company said it’d invest $10 billion and hire 13,000 workers. Wisconsin never hit its targets. And neither will Gujarat.
What’s playing out today in India is eerily similar to what happened in the US Midwest five years ago, but this time the people and government of Gujarat have no excuse for not being aware of what’s likely to unravel. Americans were told clearly that the project in Mount Pleasant didn’t make sense. But still, they went ahead.
It’s inconceivable that Foxconn truly thought it would spend as much as $10 billion to build a high-tech manufacturing plant in the middle of US farm country. But, as founder and Chairman Terry Gou said early on in the planning phase: “There is such a plan, but it is not a promise. It is a wish.”
So when Vedanta Chairman Anil Agarwal says his company will invest $19.4 billion, we ought to take it
as wishful thinking, rather than a promise. And we can also pause to bathe in the sweet irony of his chosen venture partner: Foxconn, the same name behind the Wisconsin project. Though, to be fair, the Taiwanese are less a driving force behind this India project and more a consulting partner.

—Bloomberg