Don’t compare Huber, Foxconn

As someone who tipped a Huber or two in my time, I wonder if Christian Schneider tipped a few too many before doing the Feb. 25 column (“We’ll take more of that foreign cash, please”).

Defending the role of foreign cash in the state economy, he cites the Canadians who bought the more than 100-year-old Huber brewery in Monroe and have been growing the business as a craft brewery. No word of any state or local tax-funded incentives in the deal.

Then he throws in the comparison with the Taiwan-based giant that plans to build a Wisconsin factory from scratch, with the help of some $4.5 billion in public help, including $3 billion directly from state taxpayers.

He ignores factors that make the “foreign company” label important in this case. For example, there’s the Foxconn record with its Chinese factories where workers made $2.50 an hour in conditions so bad the company needed to install suicide nets. Then there’s the uncertainties of whether Foxconn can meet our antipollution standards, given the kind of pollution that China has experienced in recent years.

Yes, foreign investment can be beneficial, but, please, let’s not give the Foxconn deal the benefit of that mammoth doubt just yet. It could take another decade or more to tell how this deal will work out.

Jim Carlson Milwaukee