President Donald Trump appeared in Mount Pleasant midday on Thursday to break ground on the huge Foxconn LCD screen plant that's being built in the Racine County community. He spoke briefly at the ceremony, telling Foxconn CEO Terry Gou that Foxconn will "love Wisconsin."
Trump, Gou, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Christopher Murodock, Wisconsin's first Foxconn employee, used shovels with gold-colored handles to turn over the dirt.
Then they headed to a Foxconn building nearby. There, Trump gave a speech, which he bookended and peppered with comments about Foxconn and the success that he predicts for the company and for the state.
Trump said the Foxconn development will create more than 13,000 jobs. The company has promised from 3,000 to 13,000 jobs. Trump reminded the crowd that he began talks with Foxconn to come to the United States. He thanked Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for bringing the idea to fruition.
Walker brokered a $3 billion state incentives package to lure the company.
President Trump also held up the huge factory and big investment from Foxconn as signs of the nation's strong economy and limitless potential.
In addition, Trump used the address to defend his trade policies and the tariffs he imposed earlier this year. He urged Wisconsin-based Harley-Davidson not to move some production overseas. That's a decision the company announced earlier this week, in response to retaliatory tariffs from other countries. Several days in a row, Trump used Twitter to blast Harley-Davidson for the move. He continued that theme in his Mount Pleasant appearance.
Trump also touched on a number of other areas. They included the opportunity that he now has to nominate a U.S. Supreme Court justice, since Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement.
Trump also thanked voters in Wisconsin for backing him in 2016, mistakenly saying that he was the first Republican to win the state since Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s; Ronald Reagan won in Wisconsin in the 1980s.
Meanwhile, dozens of groups gathered at several sites in southeastern Wisconsin to protest Trump and/or the Foxconn development.
