- The Washington Times - Wednesday, May 8, 2024

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President Biden traveled to Wisconsin on Wednesday where he touted his record on the economy and job creation while mocking former President Donald Trump’s failure to come through with a highly touted tech campus in the region.

Mr. Biden spoke in Racine, Wisconsin, where he highlighted his administration’s role in building a $3.3 billion Microsoft data center that is expected to create roughly 2,000 jobs.

The data center will be built on the same site where, in 2018, Mr. Trump broke ground on what was supposed to be his administration’s signature economic project, an electronics factory for Foxconn, a Taiwanese company.

The $10 billion project, which included billions in tax credits, fizzled and collapsed along with the promise of roughly 13,000 jobs.

On Wednesday, Mr. Biden directly blamed Mr. Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, for bungling the deal.

Foxconn turned out to be just that, a con. Go figure,” Mr. Biden said, adding that the Trump administration “wasted hundreds of millions of tax dollars to promise a project that never happened.”

Mr. Biden highlighted the Foxconn story, saying Mr. Trump repeatedly promised a manufacturing boom, but he never delivered.

About 1,000 manufacturing jobs left Racine and 6,000 manufacturing jobs left Wisconsin during the Trump administration, according to the White House’s data.

The Republican National Committee pushed back on Mr. Biden’s economic record, saying residents in the Badger State are struggling with inflation under the president’s watch. Inflation has cost the average Wisconsin family $21,981 annually in extra costs, the RNC said.

Joe Biden is trying to save face in Racine County as Wisconsinites feel the pain of Bidenomics. Manufacturing has stalled, family farms are shuttering, and costs are up for everything from electricity and gas to food and housing,” said RNC Chairman Michael Whatley in a statement.

Mr. Biden is trying to spend hundreds of billions of dollars already approved by Congress for infrastructure projects across the country, fearing that if Mr. Trump wins in November, he’ll cancel nearly all of it. The president is also doling out projects ahead of the election to curry favor with voters in swing states such as Wisconsin.

All told, Mr. Biden is in a race to spend about $1.6 trillion in loans, grants and tax credits available to support manufacturing jobs through his COVID-relief package, infrastructure law, computer chip manufacturing law and his health care, tax and climate package.

Wednesday was Mr. Biden’s fourth trip to Wisconsin so far this year, underscoring how critical the state is to his reelection plan. Wisconsin, along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, is part of the so-called Blue Wall that has been a pillar of Democratic support for presidential candidates. Mr. Trump won all three states in 2016, but Mr. Biden flipped all three just four years later.

In 2020, Mr. Biden won Wisconsin by fewer than 21,000 votes. Polls show a similarly tight race this year. An Emerson College released last week showed Mr. Trump with a 4-point lead over Mr. Biden. A CBS News/YouGov poll last month had a similar margin of victory for Mr. Trump.

• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.

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