Remember Foxconn Technology Group? The Taiwanese manufacturing site in Wisconsin was supposed to be “the eighth wonder of the world,” according to then-president Trump. It would create 13,000 jobs, and the company would invest $10 billion in exchange for $3.6 billion in cash subsidies and other benefits from state and local governments to be paid out over 15 years.

The deal was announced in 2017 at the White House by Scott Walker, then governor of Wisconsin, and Paul Ryan, then speaker of the House, and Trump. The move was touted as the beginning of a new era of economic policy. Five years later, the Washington Post reports on the state of Wisconsin’s Foxconn project.

“It just looks to me like sort of a low-rent Epcot Center. … What almost turns it into comedy is that they were renting it out for banquets,” said Kelly Gallaher, head of a local government watchdog group.

It might be funny, she added — except that local and state governments spent roughly $500 million to buy land, bulldoze houses and build infrastructure for an unfulfilled manufacturing megasite that was supposed to include dozens of futuristic buildings and a factory to produce flat-panel displays for televisions.

Some economists (some of them my Mercatus colleagues at the time) wrote a case study about Foxconn’s incentive package. It shows that the only difference between the failure of this particular deal and failures of targeted economic-development-subsidy deals is the size of the subsidies.

It’s one thing to overpromise and underdeliver. But there could be more troubles ahead for the localities involved:

The deflated job opportunities are a big enough letdown for many in the community. But the real test comes in January, when Foxconn is supposed to start paying substantially more in property taxes to the village — about $26 million a year, until 2047.

Mount Pleasant’s borrowing to build Foxconn infrastructure left it with a “very high” debt load, equal to 570 percent of its annual revenue, compared with a median of about 250 percent for U.S. cities, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The town is counting on Foxconn’s property tax payments to pay its bondholders.

“The real risk for us is if they don’t start making those payments,” Gallaher said.

The Post story is here.