"Old Style" Tech Transfer After Spat with Korea
Companies around the world are learning a lesson en masse: Any deal you strike with President Donald Trump’s government comes with a giant asterisk. Because you might believe you’re cutting a deal that aligns with the Trump agenda of rebuilding American manufacturing, but even hundreds of billions of dollars committed to that project may not be enough.
Maybe the United States doesn't need allies and inciting anti-Americanism all over the world is good policy. I dunno. I find that hard to believe but clearly the Trump administration thinks that way.
Trump on Sunday encouraged foreign companies investing in the U.S. to temporarily bring in their experts, a move he said would both attract foreign investment and help train American workers in manufacturing complex products.
Trump said that foreign companies building "extremely complex" products — such as ships, computers, trains and semiconductors — should bring in experts from their own countries for a "period of time" as a way to transfer knowledge to U.S. workers.
"When foreign companies who are building extremely complex products, machines, and various other "things," come into the United States with massive investments, I want them to bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people how to make these very unique and complex products, as they phase out of our country, and back into their land," Trump posted to his Truth Social account.
You want to do business in America, the world’s biggest economy with the most consumer-y consumers, you’ve gotta bring your operations here and create some jobs for American workers.
Of course. But it’s more complicated than that.
Companies often want to – or even need to – bring in their own workers to set up shop, install proprietary equipment, and train the less-skilled hourly employees who’ll be running things day to day.
For Korean conglomerates, doing so under less-than-above-board visas is not just an open secret, it’s a necessity.
One senior Korean official says the companies were in an “impossible position” after multiple administrations have pushed them to invest in American industry while refusing to facilitate short-term visas that would allow the projects to be completed on time.
American authorities, and Georgia in particular, had long “turned a blind eye” to workers coming in from Korea with questionable documentation, often for short-term “bursts” of construction activity, Jonathan Cleave, managing director for Korea at Intralink, a consultancy that supports foreign investment projects in the US, told the paper. 316 Koreans and 14 foreign nationals. 1 Korean detainee "wants to stay" in the US. 3 Japanese nationals are among those detained. The Japanese consulate is coordinating with Korean officials.
The Hyundai Metaplant electric vehicle manufacturing facility in Ellabell, Georgia, , on Friday, September 5. - Bloomberg/Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Kemp’s office issued a statement Friday in response to the raid.
“In Georgia, we will always enforce the law, including all state and federal immigration laws,” a Kemp spokesperson said. “The Department of Public Safety coordinated with ICE to provide all necessary support for this operation, the latest in a long line of cooperation and partnership between state law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement.”
There is still a lot we don’t know about the 300 or so Korean workers, including what kind of visas they had. Many of the other 175 workers who were swept up in the raid are Latino, according to several who spoke to CNN. A Hyundai spokesperson said none are direct employees of the carmaker. About 50 are employed by LG Energy Solutions, and another 250 work for HL-GA Battery Company, which operates under Hyundai and LG.
What we do know is that the decision to raid the factory landed like a slap in the face for South Korea, one of the United States’ closest allies and sixth-largest trading partner, and will almost certainly have a chilling effect on any business thinking of striking a deal with the Trump administration. According to several outlets, the raid was front-page news across South Korea over the weekend, leading with images of workers — shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles — being loaded onto buses.
“I’m really speechless and furious,” Choi Jong-gun, a former vice foreign minister, told. “We are there to help boost up American industries… and once they are set up, there will be good infrastructure for increasing American employment. “But what we saw was those Koreans chained with handcuffs and treated as if they were terrorists or a bunch of thugs.”
Imagine the outrage, America, if you turned on the news one night to see a foreign country, known for its squalid migrant detention centers that officials boast are surrounded by alligators, arresting 300 of your countrymen and potentially locking them up, all after a “deal” your countries worked out.
The Truth Social post follows shortly after 2 situations. First, raid of [mostly] Korean workers in Georgia, U.S. Second, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday that it will quickly decide whether most of Trump's sweeping tariffs — a key part of his economic agenda — are legal.
Earlier this month, Trump claimed that tariffs are driving more than $15 trillion in new U.S. investment and that if courts should strike them down, the U.S. would likely become a "Third World Nation."
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