Read the Exit Terms First
A subsidy announcement is written by people who want you to feel good, and the executed agreement is written by lawyers who assume you will forget it. Between those two documents lives the truth of the deal. My habit, which I recommend to you, is contrarian: skip the ribbon-cutting quote and turn straight to the clause that governs what happens when the company underdelivers. If that clause is vague, unmetered, or unenforceable, the jobs number on the front page is not a promise. It is decoration. Fiscal policy is the second power grid, and grids are judged at their failure points.
Knowledge check
Why does Gil advise reading a subsidy deal's exit terms before its headline jobs figure?
Show the answer
Because the exit terms — the clawback and recapture clauses — reveal whether the headline jobs figure is an enforceable obligation or merely an aspirational projection; a deal with weak or absent exit terms has not actually committed the company to anything.