South Korea's President says US investment demands would spark financial crisis

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/21/south-koreas-president-lee-trump-investment-financial-crisis.html

by donsupreme • 10 months ago

258 421 10 months ago

anigbrowl3• 10 months ago

You're going ot keep seeing more of this. The Japanese went through multiple rounds of the WH announcing they'd reached a deal and the Japanese saying politely but firmly that negotiations were still ongoing. The Japanese insisted on having everything in writing, and if you look at the executive order that was eventually published it's full of loopholes like 'best efforts' and 'aspirations' that articulate shared goals, but little the in the way of binding commitments.

calmbonsai• 10 months ago

Agreed. It was, initially, quite alarming (though no longer anymore) at how different the actual words in the Executive Orders differ from what was said about the policies they were, ostensibly, enforcing or creating.

JumpCrisscross5• 10 months ago

The truth is Trump is a bad negotiator. He's easily played. He's also predictably dishonest. The only real move is to string him along, which he seems to be glad to do, particularly if someone flatters or threatens to punch him.

wombatpm• 10 months ago

He negotiates in bad faith. No deal is final. He will change the terms to meet his whims.

The Chinese understand. Notice how there are no soybean purchases from China this year. They do not trust the US on important things like food.

anigbrowl3• 10 months ago

Do you even think he's sitting in on these negotiations? He can't remember Ishiba's name and just called him 'Mr Japan' when occasionally asked questions about him. My impression (and I've been watching these specific trade negotiations pretty closely) was that Scott Bessent was doing all the legwork and the Japanese seemed perfectly happy to talk to him instead of Trump. Whatever one might think of the policy arguments, Bessent seems coherent and professional whereas Trump comes off as shallow and erratic. I find it hard to imagine having hours-long focused and strategic conversation with him on a dry topic like trade policy.

It's an musing irony that Japan is a demographically much older society than the US and LDP in particular looks like a gerontocratic party, but between factionalism and parliamentary instability they actually cycle through leaders pretty efficiently

somenameforme3• 10 months ago

People are confused about what these published agreements (like with the EU as well) are. They're not legal agreements, treaties, or even executive orders, although the corresponding orders to reduce the tariffs are of course executive orders.

But the agreements themselves are completely informal and an overview of what the US expects to see happen in order to maintain the tariff reductions. The interpretation of whether the other country or group of countries is abiding the agreement is entirely at the discretion of Trump.

So there's no such thing as a loop hole. If Trump isn't satisfied with e.g. the EU's progress towards implementing said agreement, he can increase tariffs back to where they were at his discretion, with or without reason given. So there's no such thing as a loop hole in this sort of agreement.

tensor2• 10 months ago

The loop hole is every nation just agrees to stop dealing with the US and isolate them. Sure, we’d all suffer horribly but at least the west would have a future, vs we all suffer horribly anyways and fall along with the US.

jahnu• 10 months ago

People keep describing Trump as transactional. He doesn't appear to be anything of the sort. He's vain, impulsive, inconsistent, impetuous, mean, and never holds up his end of a bargain. Definitely not transactional.

heisenbit• 10 months ago

The loophole is real estate for Trump Towers or shinny golden trinkets or billion investment contracts for family. Not into old fashioned bribery? We‘ll the is a narrowly traded crypto coin to help you out.

akudha• 10 months ago

insisted on having everything in writing

Just curious, how would this help with anything, other than documentation purposes?

slater• 10 months ago

Paper trail, to be referenced later, so TFG can't be all "huh, never said that, never agreed to that" etc. etc.

Prickle4• 10 months ago

Paper trail stuff. But more importantly, when the first set of executive orders reducing tariffs rates went out, it conveniently mentioned Japanese investments but did not include tariff reductions for Japanese goods.

So the Japanese government pointed at the written agreement and told the trump admin to get their shit together. A few days later, the tariff reductions on Japanese goods was hastily added on.

yongjik2• 10 months ago

Funnily enough, according to some South Korean news, the Korean government deliberately postponed having a final written deal, or at least that's what some news articles claim, because it was such a horrible deal for Korea.

I think there's an implicit understanding that having a written deal would be worse for Korea because the deal will bind Korea and restrict its options, while Trump is a crazy guy and can and will do anything he wants, whether he signed something or not. I.e., any written deal with Trump has negative worth.

Such is the state of global trade negotiation these days.

seydor• 10 months ago

The more times you can announce you "made a deal" , the better the TV ratings

theshrike792• 10 months ago

And if you say "in two weeks", people - and the media - will forget and won't check up on it later.

They just remember you made something happen.

MangoCoffee2• 10 months ago

everything in writing

Agreements on paper doesn't mean anything to Trump.

Despite negotiating the USMCA with Canada and Mexico during his first term, Trump still threatened to impose tariffs on both countries.

What is the point of having an agreement like USMCA?

BiteCode_dev7• 10 months ago

No but him and his crowd have been keen on denying reality on a daily basis, and it's scary how well it works. I have people around me who drink this BS, and will argue in support for it because the arguments against it requires nuance thinking. At least, with a paper, it's harder to do this. You have to admit he pretended the sky was red, when it's obviously blue. There is less nuances if you get something clear in writing.

It's not much, but it's better than the alternative.

mahirsaid• 10 months ago

Just remember all of the treaties that were signed (by you know who) before invading that very same country there after, leading up to WW2. A common strategy to give yourself the first move. the strategy is to cripple ongoing negotiating the east is succeeding in with other countries that no longer trust the US, this was going on way before ORang man election. Just remember not everything is public, that goes for other countries as well. Like really china is enemy all the sudden " Why exactly, oh wait you said " Because they're growing faster then US" What!!! oh i get it now" nooo I don't get it. Also the war torn countries tend to be under developed and are rich in natural reserves of what ever the world needs. The world is not as simple as even what the corrupt media tries to make it also. It does indeed go much deeper than that and without emotion but decisions that are occurring with opinions of many heads to influence any giving decision. Yet even the most sense you can make out of this whole mess well still leave you lost even more than before you calculated the "WHYS" and the "noes". Forget the problem, i tend to think that with each disastrous decision made how long will it take to fix THAT decision later. Something like telling Afghanistan to give back the ( Bagram base) back to US and simply receiving fuck off reply by the Taliban government is simply stupid. none other than Russia not that long ago met their government to spark relationship initiatives. Umm hello Afghanistan is literal the country of mountain men defeated the invasion of Russia in the past. Well this is good for two groups of the three, Russia and Afghanistan leaving US out. US you left Afghanistan, well because there was defeated in controlling the countries ( very strategic land being so central to everything in that land mass. Now leaving Israel is saying whats happening is bad like every human on this earth, is in no way possible for the US. This will be yet another HUGE might i add in capital letters LOST in the middle east. The massive mission of the US to achieve this in controlling the middle east. Sadly the people taking this blunt is the people in that small town taking the hit. Have you seen how many men they are detaining in each photo you see of the chaos happening. In the Blue and white flag there is no consideration for the children and men, They must stop reproduction of that ethnic group so their ability to take back that land from within is impossible. Why? because this same thing happened in Iraq, Syria Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia "kinda", Libya, Various other African countries, along with some eastern European countries.

The World is moving on to the future, It's what happens yet we are supposed to learn from our mistakes but, the only thing we really learn from what history has to tell us is that we get good at replicating that same mistake to others or ourselves. A 100 years ago we were trying to make car run on gasoline and go pas 20 mph, a 100 years ago we were trying to figure out how we can expand the use of electricity, a 100 years ago Photographs have to be mobile, but how. The point is humans are animals and have the ignorance as a tribute because it's helped us survive. Its natural. whats not natural is for a planet to sustain an orbit for lengthy time period for life to to be sustained so evolution can exist. evolution./

charcircuit4• 10 months ago

“Without a currency swap, if we were to withdraw $350 billion in the manner that the U.S. is demanding and to invest this all in cash in the U.S., South Korea would face a situation as it had in the 1997 financial crisis,” he said through a translator.

So do a currency swap? South Korea isn't failing, do surely there would people to offer liquidity or financing to make it possible.

msy2• 10 months ago

There aren't a lot of counterparties to a $350Bn currency swap. SK is manoeuvring to make the Fed offering the swap and thus taking the FX risk as a requirement for this deal, which is I suspect why you're reading about this.

bfg_9k• 10 months ago

That's... not how FX swaps work.

FX swaps are where Korea fronts up with however many trillion KRW, giving it to the Fed (or whoever else, but the Fed would be the only counterparty that would be able to accommodate that size), the Fed then hands over the USD to the Koreans.

Presumably, the Koreans would then invest that USD.

Then at some point in the future the trade would be unwound and each side would receive their own currency back.

There's no currency risk in the trade for either side (unless one side defaults).

awilson5454• 10 months ago

I’m not convinced that we know more about South Korea’s economic situation than their Prime Minister’s office.

lovich2• 10 months ago

Why would the South Korean government trade even more resources for this deal?

What is the benefit they or their people would get?

charcircuit4• 10 months ago

Lower tariffs which will result in more American money coming in.

summerlight2• 10 months ago

So do a currency swap?

It is the US who refuses to do.

instagib• 10 months ago

$350 billion investment to avoid tariffs.

“Trump says the investments will be "selected" by him and controlled by the U.S., meaning Washington would have discretion over where the money will be invested.”

dchftcs• 10 months ago

You can choose to invest 350 billion in the real economy, or 350 million in TrumpCoin.

JumpCrisscross5• 10 months ago

$350 billion investment to avoid tariffs

$500 billion for Stargate!

How many of Trump's investment deals from the first term panned out?

hn_throwaway_99• 10 months ago

It's really astonishing to me how quickly we all (or, more specifically, Congress, which as done absolutely nothing to push back) accept that this is just how things work now.

Like the president deciding exactly where business investment should be made is the definition of a government command economy (remember that "Communism" bogeyman???), which used to be the antithesis of American economic policy (at least in theory), and now we're just all like "OK, cool". It's so sickening.

palmfacehn10• 10 months ago

At this point the debate has been reduced to which flavor of central planning you prefer or dislike least.

jayd163• 10 months ago

Really goes to show how full of hot air all the pearl clutching and hand wringing was over any Biden policy.

jacquesm12• 10 months ago

Right here on HN you'll find people that are arguing both that this is good and that the conservatives are rightfully attacking the federal institutions because the state got 'too big'. And in some cases those are the very same people!

sidcool• 10 months ago

There's a problem here. World depending so much on one country. It's a single point of failure.

ares623• 10 months ago

Up until recently it was a good trade-off.

toomuchtodo• 10 months ago

The US sold trust, and it burned it all up for someone's ego. Unfortunate.

protocolture2• 10 months ago

The US has more foreign dependencies, than it has countries depending on it, on every level except military.

And even then, a lot of its military dependants are just kidding themselves that the seps will come to their aid if required.

Its ephemeral.

herbst5• 10 months ago

But does it really or is it just something Americans learned to think? Everything is still well here in Switzerland.

cozzyd• 10 months ago

With so many investments, imagine how many ICE raids there could be!

DaSHacka4• 10 months ago

Oh man, this but unironically

ArtTimeInvestor• 10 months ago

If one country manages to outpace all others in the race to better AI, all other countries are at the mercy of that one country.

Depending on how the one country treats the others, it might be ok - like it is kind of ok for some animals to live in a zoo, I guess. Or it could turn out very bad - all other countries becoming slave colonies of the one that rules the world.

Currently it seems like only two countries are really taking part in the AI race. The USA and China.

On a political level, I am not sure if there is still time for the rest of the world to try and avoid becoming 100% dependent on them. It looks like there is not even awareness of the issue.

On a personal level, it is an interesting question, how one should brace themselves for the times ahead.

JumpCrisscross5• 10 months ago

If one country manages to outpace all others in the race to better AI, all other countries are at the mercy of that one country

History is replete with these supposed silver bullets. (See: Marinetti.) They rarely pan out that way in the long run.

And if AGI really is that level of civilisation changer, the country it's discovered in matters much less than the people it's loyal to. (If GPT or Grok become self aware and exponentially self improving, they're probably not going to give two shits about America's elected government.)

NoMoreNicksLeft2• 10 months ago

the country it's discovered in matters much less than the people it's loyal to. (If GPT or Grok become self aware and exponentially self improving, they're probably not going to give two shits about America's elected government.)

People are loyal (to whatever degree they're actually loyal), because it is a monkey virtue. Why would an AGI be loyal to anyone or anything? If we're not smart enough to carefully design the AGI because we're stumbling around just trying to invent any AGI at all, we won't know how to make loyalty fundamental to its mind at all. And it's not as if it evolved from monkeys such that it would have loyalty as a vestige of its former condition.

gdulli• 10 months ago

All we can do is hope that it's China's population that succumbs first to the mediocrity and decay of offloading their thinking to machines.

prmoustache3• 10 months ago

I don't think the AI race to ruin the internet has any relevance to what will bring food to the plate in the next 2 decades.

ehnto• 10 months ago

AI will empower the service industries, but I don't see it having much impact past administrative efficiency in all other industries relevant to international trade. It won't make minerals more abundant, it won't make farmland more available, for example. It could empower manufacturing a bit but they are bottlenecked by physical resources, supply chain access and other physical constraints as well so there are limits there.

I also think AI is ubiquitous now, no one country will "win". Maybe someone has a breakthrough, but information is globalized, it wouldn't take long for the technology to spread.

Again the actual constraints I believe will be physical. Who has the most chips, the most power, the most space etc, to run the AI.

jemmyw2• 10 months ago

It seems like the big improvements in the current AI flavor are done. It happened very quickly, and so did the diminishing returns. It's amazing compared to 2 years ago, it's great compared to a year ago, it's not that different to 6 months ago.

Lots of room in optimization and figuring out how to actually use it usefully. But I don't think any one country is now poised to take a leap ahead on this stuff. And Chinese researchers kind of showed that once the technique was out of the bag, catching up wasn't hard.

palmfacehn10• 10 months ago

It isn't immediately clear that the administration's heterodox approach to state capitalism is more destructive than what passes as orthodox. Personally I'm not a fan of either option. Given the general mainstream preference for interventionism, one could characterize it as a "progressive" approach to central planning.

A more coherent critique might lay out the shortcomings of both flavors of economic interventionism. Instead, we're stuck in a partisan debate over who has a better central planning approach. Maybe there are reasonable or pragmatic points to be made there, but admitting as much allows the possibility that perhaps Trump's interventions should be measured empirically, rather than rejected based on the a priori flaws of interventionism.

Partisans are free to pick and choose which statistics and time periods they feel best illustrate their case. Easy to see how this devolves into incoherence.

XorNot5• 10 months ago

US unemployment is up, inflation is up, tourism is down, defence sales are being cancelled admidst the largest procurement expansion in history, foreign investment is down, business confidence has been shattered by an incoherent and arbitrarily changing tarrif regime.

Oh and the President is advocating that businesses should stop quarterly reporting...

palmfacehn10• 10 months ago

I agree that the outcome will be destructive.

The questions are:

Is it is more or less destructive than the alternative destruction? Who is it more economically destructive for? Over what time period is it more or less destructive than the alternative interventionism? Is 6 months a meaningful time horizon?

It becomes muddled very quickly. I would appeal for a consistent approach which opposes both forms of destructive interventionism.

branko_d• 10 months ago

businesses should stop quarterly reporting

That might actually not be such a bad thing, if it removes some of the pressure to think overly short-term from the company management.

cryptonector2• 10 months ago

Without commenting on any of the details or economics, the smart thing to have done would have been to make the $350bn thing be over 10 years and be slow to ramp up, then wait Trump out. I'm surprise he didn't do that.

kumarvvr• 10 months ago

trump and his cronies would never accept that.

I think this is what Japan did initially. Announce a huge number, 500 bn I think, and then slowly trickle out the news that it will be over 10 or so years.

But that didn't sit well with trump. There was news immediately that Japan must invest the whole amount immediately to escape tariffs.

dathinab3• 10 months ago

I'm not sure a single country will to the "invest immediately" thing, like at all.

In the same way politician outside of the US trust anymore what Trump says when it comes to economics, a lot of countries seem to have started to response the same way. I.e. speak with Trump like he did with them, do hollow promises, and then backtrack and/or circumvent them.

lovich2• 10 months ago

I'm surprise he didn't do that.

The leaders of countries have to deal with internal politics. Most People, with a capital P, do not like feeling abused and mugged, and will be angry at their leaders for acting so weak.

It seems that internal politics are winning out, at least in the moment, over the current US admins threats

foogazi• 10 months ago

Look at it as being all internal politics - that’s where a leader’s power comes from

summerlight2• 10 months ago

One condition that Washington has been broadly mandating is, when they ask for the money then it should be deposited in the treasury's account within a short period. Basically they control the pace of the investment and the detail is not even a part of the deal.

rapnie• 10 months ago

The tariffs. The overall situation. I do not understand why Wall Street isn't yet in a freefall. Did they find good sources of bubble fuel then to keep on the heat?

tommica• 10 months ago

Would it be possible that the tariffs are working? I'm clueless when it comes to these things, so it's a pure guess.

leptons• 10 months ago

It depends on from what angle you are looking at it. If the goal is to destabilize the US, then yes, the tariffs are working.

idle_zealot• 10 months ago

Considering that investment in local manufacturing is down, it's pretty safe to say they're not "working" in the sense of reinvigorating local industry.

palmfacehn10• 10 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWjpDxvqSSE

Here's an even handed approach and overview of some of the tariff related stats. The presenter is a critic of tariffs, but concedes that the results thus far are not as simple as some here would suggest.

6:22

This is just a matter of acknowledging the data on the graph and saying this is quite a difference from the way it was a year ago. And so, people who said this wouldn't happen, that's wrong. It did happen. There it is. And I think it's important to acknowledge that. Um, not only that, but a lot of people said, "Well, this is going to lead to the price of goods, especially automobiles, coming into the United States, is going to skyrocket." Well, so far that hasn't been the case.
In fact, prices have come down. And you can go to Google and you can look it up and there's many articles discussing the fact that the Chinese automakers have largely been eating the tariffs so far.

SpicyLemonZest• 10 months ago

The practical effects of the tariffs have been substantially more muted than most people expected. A lot of supply chain folks were genuinely expecting shelves to run empty by June or July. I would emphasize that “muted” isn’t “nonexistent”, and a lot of metrics would be down if not for AI investment. But it seems that a lot of people are still interested in buying from and selling to the US even with a crazy dictator in charge.

bruce5114• 10 months ago

The shelves wont be empty, the stuff is freely available, it just costs more to the US consumer. Just because there's a giant tarif on Brazil doesn't mean Americans stop drinking coffee.

And of course people are still selling to the US. From our perspective nothing has changed. It's not costing us any more than it did before.

Markets remain up, bolstered partly by the AI stocks, but also because the market believes US consumers will continue to consume. Their appetite for consumption, and debt, remains unabated.

Am I building a factory in the US? No. The current administration makes that very unappealing. The US society is unstable right now, policy is fluid, enforcement of laws seems weak, the labor market is (justifiably) paranoid. As a foreigner I'm not even traveling to the US anytime soon. There are other, more appealing, opportunities to explore.

ls6122• 10 months ago

Part of it was that the China tariffs were canceled in May after around a month of operation, and that was short enough that it could be just covered by the inventory stockpiling that companies did on a massive scale in Q1. If they had gone on longer it would have been an ugly summer when those buffers were exhausted.

zzleeper2• 10 months ago

Three reasons IMO.

1. If you take out AI-related companies, SP500 is down YTD

2. Even then, because the exchange rate is down 10-15% against most countries, that mechanically increases the SP500 by 5-7.5% (because half of SP500 firm profits are from abroad)

3. Many ppl expect lots of inflation in the medium term (look at 10yr-3m spreads). Firms are basically Equity+Debt, and because inflation wipes out the value of Debt, then the value of Equity mechanically increases

So, that's my pet story why the market is at an ATH (source: am an economist, can't say where, but I know lots of well-known economists)

XorNot5• 10 months ago

No one sells if they think there's other suckers who'll buy later. Everyone is ultimately trying to get out as late as possible with all the money - hence "the market can remain irrational longer then you can remain solvent" being evergreen.

dustypotato• 10 months ago

This is a good analysis. I was wondering the same and you nailed it.

grafmax• 10 months ago

Firms are basically Equity+Debt, and because inflation wipes out the value of Debt, then the value of Equity mechanically increases

I don’t think this holds water as an explanation. The equity risk premium is basically zero.

burnerthrow0083• 10 months ago

The only thing I would add to your point #3 is this:

* Given the same profit margin, higher overall prices mean that firms will have higher profits.

* The value of an equity is the discounted sum of all future profits.

That is, stocks are a hedge against inflation. Investors are willing to pay "unreasonable" prices today because they expect that increased future cashflows will cause the price to become reasonable.

ls6122• 10 months ago

#3 isn't quite right because a rise in inflation changes the discount rates that are applied to future cash flows in the equity valuation process. And on top of that, for risk-averse investors the fundamental uncertainty we are living in also will alter their discount rates independently of monetary effects. The first two are true enough at least under certain definitions of what an "AI-related company" is.

(source: I am also an economist who specializes in financial economics and corporate finance)

jayd163• 10 months ago

The value of the dollar is not so great. If you look at the S&P priced in euros it paints a different picture.

rich_sasha• 10 months ago

Markets hit all time highs in 2007, even though the shit was already very close to the fan, and the smell was propagating.

I'm not saying the bubble is about to burst, only that this is not a great indicator.

thrance• 10 months ago

At this point, the real economy is completely decoupled from financial markets who are perfectly happy "investing" in bubble after bubble. If the markets were at all representative of the country's actual economic health, they'd have crashed long ago.

tim333• 10 months ago

I was just reading an FT article mentioning the "inelastic markets hypothesis" that markets are predominantly driven by cash flows rather than rational analysis of value. People invest in index funds etc because the market goes up, the market goes up because people are buying. It's a bit of a bubble.

(article https://www.ft.com/content/6f549890-c2a6-4823-a095-c8ea73f7e...)

rsynnott3• 10 months ago

The dollar's down fairly severely, which does skew things a bit (US assets are priced in dollars, but most S&P500 companies would have substantial foreign income). S&P500 is down YTD in euro terms, say.

tacticalturtle• 10 months ago

I think there’s an expectation on the Supreme Court to overturn many of the tariffs when it takes up the case in November.

There’s already a market forming in trading the right to tariff refunds.

xg152• 10 months ago

They're still high on AI.

arunabha• 10 months ago

It's mind blowing to witness the speed and rapidity with which we have

* Completely alienated key allies via an erratic and unpredictable tariff policy

* Significantly undermined faith in US economic data and fiscal policy via overt politicization of key economic institutions

* Increased the deficit by almost $3 trillion after vowing to reduce the deficit

* Signaled far and wide that pay for play is the new norm, whether for pardons or favourable policy. Preferably paid in crypto, but with in kind payments being acceptable.

Is there any wonder that other countries are unwilling to trust the US? The only hope we have is that the current bout of madness in Washington DC is a one time aberration, but who knows!

CamperBob2• 10 months ago

He did say we'd get tired of all the winning.

dboreham4• 10 months ago

Not really when you realize people elected a seriously mentally ill person.

DSingularity4• 10 months ago

Don’t forget: our insane support for genocide and an out-of-control genocidal regime that’s clearly trying to trigger WW3.

vkou7• 10 months ago

Don’t forget: our insane support for genocide and an out-of-control genocidal regime that’s clearly trying to trigger WW3.

Look, I think the people involved should be waiting trial in the Hague as much as the next man, but let's be real. They could kill another 5.2 million people, and nobody would start WW3 over it.

Some people's lives are simply worth more than others to world powers, and in this case, the Thanksgiving Turkey getting a stay of execution would get more people to tune in to the telly.

toomim3• 10 months ago

That's not genocide.

- https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/opinio...

- https://www.scholarsfortruthaboutgenocide.com/

JohnTHaller• 10 months ago

Don't forget the 800,000 layoffs so far this year.

lwansbrough3• 10 months ago

No, the US has completely and utterly destroyed all credibility it had. It is a farce.

There is no hope for it to return. US allies have credible evidence that the American populace are untrustworthy, uncaring, and frankly, stupid.

The only way for the US to restore credibility is to prosecute. And then survive another 100 years without doing it again.

The remaining influence it has economically and militarily should be considered to be "running on fumes."

US allies are looking for an exit strategy and aren't going to reconsider. Russia won.

I fully anticipate this to be downvoted, I don't care. You are coping if you think America can pull itself out of this.

jayd163• 10 months ago

This is a very silly take. It's going to take America 100 years to restore credibility? It didn't even take post war Germany that long.

DaSHacka4• 10 months ago

You are coping if you think America can pull itself out of this.

I find such a comment from someone who themselves is coping thinking any of this matters outside of extreme online bubbles hilarious.

MangoToupe3• 10 months ago

Russia won.

Russia is neither the primary instigator nor benefactor of our dysfunction, and wishes it had 1/100th the influence over our elections that Israel does. This narrative never made any sense to me.

herbst5• 10 months ago

Most confusing is how the majority of US people doesn't seem to see any of that while the rest of the world is fully aware that this is exactly what just happened.

gyomu• 10 months ago

The only hope we have is that the current bout of madness in Washington DC is a one time aberration, but who knows!

I’ve been hearing people pray this is a one time aberration for the last 10 years. At this point, the ride seems way more likely to get bumpier than not for the next 10 years.

BiteCode_dev7• 10 months ago

Indeed, we already heard that in 2001:

- Bush was hated and considered a national shame.

- The invasion of Iraq while lying about WMD and against the UN vote, eroded international trust.

- The Patriot act was supposed to be temporary be was extended again and again.

- We got the reveal of mass spying by Snowden.

And... nothing. Obama didn't do anything about the wars, mass spying, or the patriot act. He was an elegant break from the dumbness, but didn't stop the elevator to keep climbing after him, just paused it for a few years.

All of it was just stepping stones after stepping stones.

It's not a one-time aberration; it's a sign of the times.

sschueller• 10 months ago

IMO the damage internationally is permanent unless constitutional changes are made to prevent such events in the future. The trust is completely gone.

The risk of making any deals that could be overturned in just four years is too great for many in the private sector and also for international treaties.

FuckButtons2• 10 months ago

I can’t think of any examples from history of nations which have had dictatorships take over from democratic systems and then had things improve without revolution or war as an impetus for change. I would be very happy for someone to point out one, but it seems to me that the rot of which trump is a symptom will likely take a significant blood letting to correct, if indeed it is to be corrected.

tstrimple• 10 months ago

Yeah, people keep talking about the danger Trump represents but Trump is nothing without tens of millions of enthusiastic supporters. Rank and file conservatives represent the real risk to the country. None of this would be possible without them and after Trump, they will do what they have always done. Do everything they can to find someone even worse. There will be no introspection or lessons learned. Just doubling down on degeneracy.

zzleeper2• 10 months ago

Remember the story of Nero watching Rome burn, and asking how could he and everyone involved be so fool? Well I'm not surprised any more. Feels like a perfectly believable story :/

magnio• 10 months ago

This "pay up for trade access" is similar to the tributary system of feudal China. Every year, neighboring countries of China like Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam sent envoys to Imperial China, paying gold, women, and exotic products, in return for recognition of their sovereignty (subject to the supreme authority of Chinese emperor), military protection, and access to trade routes within China.

It is interesting to see the resurgence of such imperial practices in modern-day America. I think it worked out quite well for the Tang dynasty, but arguably that was because all East Asian feudal states were authoritarian monarchy back then. A logical next step would be for POTUS to declare himself as the supreme leader of the world, emend educational materials to propound the idea that the US is superior to other tributary states, quell all internal cries of undemocratic practices, and ban books that promote historical knowledge to avoid unnecessary dissent.

camillomiller• 10 months ago

Stop giving them ideas!

BiteCode_dev7• 10 months ago

A logical next step would be for POTUS to declare himself as the supreme leader of the world

Well, he is already positioning himself for being at least the US DFL, already suggesting a 3rd illegal mandate:

https://www.trumpstore.com/product/trump-2028-hat/

And the US, being the most powerful country in the world, barred, maybe China, the next step is not so far-fetched.

tho23434234dfdf• 10 months ago

supreme leader of the world, emend educational materials to propound the idea that the US is superior to other tributary states, quell all internal cries of undemocratic practices, and ban books that promote historical knowledge to avoid unnecessary dissent.

You mean just make what is already de-facto practice, de-jure ?

Yay, how benevolent our new masters are.

SllX2• 10 months ago

This "pay up for trade access" is similar to the tributary system of feudal China. Every year, neighboring countries of China like Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam sent envoys to Imperial China, paying gold, women, and exotic products, in return for recognition of their sovereignty (subject to the supreme authority of Chinese emperor), military protection, and access to trade routes within China.

The most irritating thing is that I specifically didn't want to see a return to form for this for China, but I never imagined that America in the 21st Century would somehow get there first. It was just out of fucking nowhere.

godelski• 10 months ago

I think what's most interesting to me is that they're also the party who's favorite amendment was written specifically to quell the rise of such leaders. They have explicitly talked about how that amendment was to protect the US from demagogues and autocrats.

They've been fairly quiet about that recently and I'm curious how they'll make that pivot. It's only a matter of time before someone on the left starts suggesting their constituents exercise that right in at least a symbolic nature. I've seen a rise in the exercise of this right by socialist groups and other radicals. But even if it is all symbolic it sets the stage for a powder keg moment. But if the right doesn't restrict this right then how far can they go and keep their heads?

It's morbidly fascinating and terrifying to me how they so successfully turned the right's worst nightmares into wet dreams. I do wonder, how far can it go? But I've never not wanted to know the answer to a question so much in my life. Please, I do not want to find out[0]

[0] no, you can't literally answer this. It can only be learned through the experience. So don't reply to me as if you have an exact answer, you only have speculation. But if you have a time machine, I'd appreciate next week's lotto numbers (and the week after ;)

hbarka2• 10 months ago

Include also gunboat diplomacy, like done to Japan (“black ships”) or opium to China.

derelicta2• 10 months ago

A logical next step would be for POTUS to declare himself as the supreme leader of the world, emend educational materials to propound the idea that the US is superior to other tributary states, quell all internal cries of undemocratic practices, and ban books that promote historical knowledge to avoid unnecessary dissent

My brother in Christ, you Americans do this already and have been doing this at least since the end of WW2. Ever wondered why communism couldn't spread in Northern Europe, South America or many places of Asia?

ammo1662• 10 months ago

This "pay up for trade access" is similar to the tributary system of feudal China.

The two systems are fundamentally different. In the ancient Chinese tributary system, based on the principle of "厚往薄来" China's reciprocation had to exceed the value of the tribute, thereby providing tangible benefits to the tributary states. This practice even led to later restrictions on the frequency of tribute missions from certain countries

e40• 10 months ago

Trump is a symptom not a cause. The right has been planning this for many decades and many think it started with Powell Memorandum, 1971.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.

lostlogin3• 10 months ago

Trump is a symptom not a cause.

I can’t remember where I read it and searching isn’t finding anything.

Someone stated that extreme times lead to extreme leaders. The way to lead in extreme times is to be more extreme.

Removing Trump would not solve America’s problems.

verzali• 10 months ago

The only hope we have is that the current bout of madness in Washington DC is a one time aberration, but who knows!

Bit late for that.

Tadpole918110• 10 months ago

For real. Bud, he was elected twice. And the Republican party survived Bush.

danmaz74• 10 months ago

Trump is working hard to remove any notions that the USA are "leaders of the free world", and making it into the unapologetic "mafia boss of the American Empire".

Ray205• 10 months ago

A good policy of enlightening all the fools who imagined that some kind of "free world" exists.

herbst5• 10 months ago

leaders of the free world

That ship pretty much sank last time you voted for this mastermind. Nobody in their mind mind still thinks that about the US other than themself. Sorry

hbarka2• 10 months ago

Don’t forget DOGE, brainchild of Elon Musk, promising to save trillions from the deficit but ended up leaving with a wake in billions of waste and turmoil. A U.S. Senate investigation revealed that DOGE is responsible for at least $21.7 billion in taxpayer waste.

https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/07/...

archagon• 10 months ago

Musk has verified blood on his hands: https://archive.is/YknTv

chaostheory• 10 months ago

You forgot to mention the insane immigration policy during a time when birth rates have plummeted below replacement rates.

lostlogin3• 10 months ago

The only hope we have is that the current bout of madness in Washington DC is a one time aberration

Or even just a two-time thing.

SideburnsOfDoom2• 10 months ago

The only hope we have is that the current bout of madness in Washington DC is a one time aberration

It's literally the second go-around.

Trust wasn't completely lost the first time. Because of the hope that you mentioned.

But now, unlike then, the rest of world is taking note that the USA is simply going to be like this periodically, and planning accordingly.

decafninja7• 10 months ago

James David says hello.

Also the first time around, there was also a contingent of old school Republicans around him acting as a guard rail.

Arun2009• 10 months ago

This may, in the end, be for the best - if it dents American power over the long term.

I like America and Americans very much, but no state should wield the kind of power the United States currently holds, precisely for the reasons the Trump administration exemplifies. When a responsible government is in office, all is well and good. But when the political winds shift and a more capricious actor takes charge, such concentrated power can become dangerous.

I hope America’s allies have taken note and will adjust their policies accordingly.

FuckButtons2• 10 months ago

You know what follows a power vacuum? War. I would rather have a status quo that feels at times chafing than the opportunity for everything to get absolutely horrendous in the not too distant future.

xg152• 10 months ago

Increased the deficit by almost $3 trillion after vowing to reduce the deficit

After vowing to and dismantling half the federal government services, ostensibly in order to reach the goal of a reduced deficit...

bmitc2• 10 months ago

The supporters of these lunatics don't look into any of that. It's Americans destroying America basically out of spite for "the other side". These people are terrorists in my opinion, but they view themselves as the true Americans.

fabianholzer• 10 months ago

2016 to 2020 would have been a one time aberration.

Tubelord• 10 months ago

Yes. The strength of the dollar is based on stability

michaelhoney• 10 months ago

And the weaker the US gets, the less other countries will put up with its bullshit.

joshdavham• 10 months ago

I'm curious how the average Korean feels about what's going on in the US, or even how much they think about this stuff?

I know for example that in Canada and Europe, we're mostly all pretty disturbed about these trade disruptions, but I'm curious if Korean's feel equally 'put off'. Are they as dependent on the US as Canada and Europe?

joules77• 10 months ago

Matters to exporters. Not to everyone. SK is a 2 Trillion $$$ economy. What numbers are involved here is in the 20-50 Billion a year. Not like life or death.

pointlessone• 10 months ago

1-3% of GDP is nothing to sneeze at. I’m having hard time believing this investment into US would pay off anytime soon if at all.

boodleboodle• 10 months ago

Average korean:

We just hope Americans realize some day that the world is not taking advantage of them like Trump wants them to believe.

Korea is very dependent on America but this is a mutually beneficial situation. We are their customers and they are ours. Except Korea is more desparate so the US can afford to rip us off or kill contracts whenever it feels like it. We are always thankful to UN allies and the US for freeing SK from NK but Americans are not here to save us. They are here to snoop into beijing and control the pacific ocean.

Herring2• 10 months ago

You don't understand. Americans elected a rapist. YOU are his next target.

Read Aesop's "The Wolf and the Lamb", and good luck.

They knew exactly what they were doing, and they will do it again.

MangoCoffee2• 10 months ago

Many comments focus on Trump, but I think the deeper problem lies with America itself. After all, America elected Trump twice.

I don't agree with Peter Zeihan on many of his views, but I think his point about the collapse of the global order set up by America is what's happening.

Trump is dismantling the global order/rule of laws established by America after WWII and the Cold War. I find it ironic that Ian Bremmer said the Chinese care more about the rule of law (established by America) than Americans do in this interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvvzx-ecTrw

dboreham4• 10 months ago

Both can be true. Historians can dig into economic conditions in interwar Germany, lack of deep sea ports, colonies, etc. But also: Adolf he one mad cookie.

contrarian12345• 10 months ago

Ian Bremmer said the Chinese care more about the rule of law (established by America) than Americans do in this interview

I was confused why they didn't support Ukraine more. By not strongly condemning stuff like Crimea they seem to deeply undermine their position with regards to Taiwan

Tadpole918110• 10 months ago

After two decades of reports on Trump's ties to Russian crime in his real estate and Russian government in his politics... You were confused why Trump and the Party of Trump do not strongly condemn Russia and regularly take stances that strengthen that geopolitical group's goals?

freefrog3344332• 10 months ago

China knows NATO will turn on them if Russia is defeated. Also, the narrative that Russia launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine isn't strong outside the West. It's more complex, starting with Bush announcing Ukraine eligible for NATO membership, the Maidan coup, and 8 years of civil war against the 4 Eastern Oblasts that voted to secede from Ukraine.

herbst5• 10 months ago

The focus on trump is to not blame and upset the individual people. Reality is we all know that it's the Americans own fault, and basically what they wanted and obviously decided for and still do.

testing223212• 10 months ago

Trump is dismantling the global order/rule of laws

He’s doing nothing of the sort.

He’s dismantling how every country sees, trust, trades and deals with the US, and only the US.

Everyone else will just look to everyone else and the US won’t be involved

yongjik2• 10 months ago

I think it's pretty significant that President Lee mentioned the 1997 financial crisis: arguably, it was Korea's version of 9/11. It shook the country in a way people didn't realize was possible, and the country was, in a sense, never the same after that.

Imagine a US politician saying "agreeing to this would be a disaster at the same level as 9/11."

Lee is basically telling Koreans that this is something he can never let go through, and he'll do everything to stop it from happening. (Of course whether Koreans buy it is another matter, but after watching ICE arresting hundreds of workers, I think most are willing to believe Lee rather than the US government.)

thijson• 10 months ago

I heard that he was considering going to the recent Beijing meeting where Putin was, however he heard that Kim Jong Un would also be there, so he decided against it.

hunglee2• 10 months ago

Converting allies into vassals is logical mid point of 'America First'. Best ROK can do is string US along and hope for a more benign successor regime.

aussieguy1234• 10 months ago

Seems to be a dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45328828

donkeylazy456• 10 months ago

I can't take these nonsenses anymore.

America has made more profits than countries that take manufacturing jobs from USA. It was totally win-win. Now America destroying these relationships by themselves. Even asking allies economic failure to fulfill their (or trump administration's) greed. Those economic failure possibilities will make their allies' manufacturing capabilities degrade. They don't even have any capabilities and proper plans for re-buliding domestic manufacturing industries to satisfy their needs. (price, capability)

geremiiah• 10 months ago

They just want to feel like they are perpetual victims. It appeals to them and it justifies their cruelty towards others.

I guess this is a major difference between the far-left and the far-right. The far-left go out of their way to join the cause of various victims of oppression because they love to always be rooting for the underdog. The far-right also loves the under-dog arch but they don't go around trying to join desperate causes. Instead they manufacture their own narrative in which they are the perpetual victims. Much less noble, much more self-serving.

Herring2• 10 months ago

It's an old story. Check out Aesop's "The Wolf and the Lamb".

contrarian12345• 10 months ago

Why have nations not come together to collectively shut down this whole tariff blackmail thing?

If everyone came together and signed up for a Chinese-style reciprocal tariff system then wouldn't this whole charade be over instantly?

I get some nations decided flattering Trump would work out (Vietnam? UK?) but even in the best case they still get tariffs.. just lower..

And how has the tariffs not completely tanked the stock market? Are markets assuming this is just temporary madness and it'll get rolled back?

ragebol2• 10 months ago

Why have nations not come together ...
If everyone came together

Finally winning that Nobel peace prize by unifying all the countries that are not the US would be amazing. Independent California, Texas and some other parts left sorta-kinda OK-ish after the new American civil war can then also join that alliance later, achieving world peace. Trump gets a posthumous Nobel peace prize and each year we all celebrate by gold plating a hamburger or something.

contrarian12345• 10 months ago

It's not super crazy for all nations to agree on something. For instance with Gaza everyone except for the US kinda agreed what's going on is no good. I think tariffs are arguably even easier to agree on. I don't think there's a single nation that's ambivalent about the US tariffs - or feel it's "maybe not so bad"

herbst5• 10 months ago

Why do you think that is not the case? This is exactly what is happening, local example is Switzerland just signed a few free trade agreements.

The US dollar is down. The market is tanking, you just need to change your POV

8bitsrule• 10 months ago

Crazy request of $350 billion investment by SK. That's 20% of it's estimated 2025 GDP of $1700 billion. Could the US pledge 20% (6000 billion) to some other country?

Awfully nice of Myung to be so understanding after the US arrest of 300+ SK workers in Georgia a month ago.

iddan• 10 months ago

Arrest of illegal workers that is

DaSHacka4• 10 months ago

Strange, how they always seem to 'forget' that part

banku_brougham• 10 months ago

this comment is troubling, as I understand they all had visas to work temporarily in building the facility

WastedCucumber2• 10 months ago

Do you have a source describing the "illegality"? This is genuine question - I have not found a source digging into the legal question.

The best I could find was a suggestion that their visa waivers were in fact correct for the purpose, except for the fact that their companies were using visa waivers over and over again. Or maybe the workers were? I'm not sure.

antonvs2• 10 months ago

If that’s true, shouldn’t the “illegal” label more correctly apply to the activity of the company knowingly employing them? What do you believe the workers did wrong?

Hilift• 10 months ago

Completely impractical. Look at other countries. France and the UK are under enormous budget pressure, mostly due to the cost of funding the defense of the illegal war in Ukraine, but also due to other costly recent policy decisions. Both countries aren't considered poor, but they now have difficult decisions to make. That means anyone who thinks these investments such as these by any country can be from taxes or savings elsewhere are delusional. It would have to be loans.

Now look at Australia. It committed to a $368 billion ($1 billion per month for 30 years) submarine deal with the US. This program will never deliver any perceivable value to Australian people, it is more strategically beneficial for reviving a failing boat and ship building industry in the US. The US itself is supposedly building a new Columbia-class ballistic submarine at a cost of $110 each?

These are simply confabulated, made up numbers. And why is Korea building valuable, current generation facilities in other countries? It would make sense if it would result in for example, the sale of more Korean automobiles, but it isn't. It is basically a shakedown ("tribute").

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/15/aukus-will-cos...

epolanski4• 10 months ago

mostly due to the cost of funding the defense of the illegal war in Ukraine

What is a "legal" war supposed to be?

justincormack• 10 months ago

Thats not the primary budget issue in France and UK.

phatfish• 10 months ago

Pretty sure the cost of helping Ukraine is pocket change compared to the rise in welfare payments since COVID and the "triple lock" to keep pensioners minted.

trhway3• 10 months ago

It committed to a $368 billion ($1 billion per month for 30 years) submarine deal with the US. This program will never deliver any perceivable value to Australian people

Ukrainians thought the same giving up nuclear weapons, and getting rid of a lot of other weapons, including old 300km range ballistic missiles, and selling off new missile development to Saudis or something like this - the kind of weapons mere presence of which would have affected the Russia's invasion calculations.

May be Australia would be better served by strategic weapons other than the submarines, yet i don't think Australia can avoid getting such strategic weapons or can get similar level of strategic defense cheaper.

mettamage2• 10 months ago

Curious question: how is a war illegal? Isn’t that just… war?

Or at least, most wars seem to be like that. Rarely is there the case where 2 countries consent to have war with each other. There always seems to be someone that aggresses and someone that is forced to defend. For if they wouldn’t then they face subjugation or worse.

rsynnott3• 10 months ago

France has spent about 3bn a year on aid to Ukraine (though some of this is in terms of transfer of military equipment rather than new spending, and some of it will be tied to loans funded by the income from confiscated Russian assets). France spends about 50bn a year on pensions (EDIT: Oh, wow, no, much more than that; that's a projected _deficit_), which is what's really driving its budgetary problems.

jampekka• 10 months ago

Could the US pledge 20% (6000 billion) to some other country?

Maybe to destroy it? :)

jabl• 10 months ago

$6T is in the ballpark of the costs of the Afghanistan and Gulf War episode II (+subsequent occupation) foreign policy adventures.

mrtksn2• 10 months ago

Could the US pledge 20% (6000 billion) to some other country?

Of course US can do that, it can provide a temporary boost to the leader of that country. It doesn't mean anything other than that.

Qatar pledged 1 trillion dollars investment in US: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/05/fact-sheet-pr...

Their GDP is 200B USD. EU is similar, on 200B Budget they promised 600B investment.

As you can see, %20 of GDP investment is a rookie number. People do 3x to 5x of GDP these days.

I don't know why Koreans are making fuss of it, maybe they don't get the Western politics?

ilsubyeega• 10 months ago

I'm Korean. I really really don't know. Every day, I wake up to every new news:

- A tariff agreement signed, but then they immediately mention a different percentage (Japan)

- Korean(mostly) engineers arrested on suspicion of participating in the construction of a US factory (IIRC it is not claimed whether it's legal or not)

- H-1B visa situation

Looking at the current situation, there's no "guarantee" of tariff reductions through huge investment to US. Also there is no justification for the argument that countries that do not invest should do so as other countries do.

rsynnott3• 10 months ago

EU is similar, on 200B Budget they promised 600B investment.

As far as I can see, the EU 'promise' was pretty much just FDI by European companies in the US that was expected anyway; the commission even explicitly said that it could not guarantee any of this. Most 'promises' would be similar.

shubhamjain• 10 months ago

No one needs to make an investment. The playbook—as all countries are figuring it out—to navigate the crisis is simple: agree in principle to the demands, let the narcissistic toddler self-pat, brag about how fantastic of a deal maker he is. Stall, delay to make things official. Let it all die down slowly. Need more time? How about blatant corruption like approving Trump Towers, or gifting a corporate jet? Or make a token investment, just enough to let him brag again.

What every country is doing is buying time. Just enough till the next election or (hopefully) sooner.

xp84• 10 months ago

It should definitely never be overlooked how easy to manipulate he is with flattery, and by tiny (by standards of whole nations' economies) bribes that enrich his family company directly.

timeon2• 10 months ago

What every country is doing is buying time. Just enough till the next election or (hopefully) sooner.

Is that enough? I do not think this is about one person. US seems to be changed.

hiddencost• 10 months ago

Anyone playing for the next election isn't paying attention. Power has been seized, it will not be released.

amanaplanacanal• 10 months ago

He has only been able to do what he has done because of the Republican bootlickers in Congress. If the Democrats can take both houses in the midterms they can shut him down.

Yoric5• 10 months ago

I remember some estimates made after the US elections of what Stephen Miller's policy would cost. According to these estimates, following Miller's plan would require more or less the entire world's GDP to be invested in the US for several consecutive years. Obviously, this would require more than a little bullying to get there.

So far, we got the bullying, plenty of non-binding agreements, 100% of goodwill and soft power loss, increased soft power for China, a looming financial crisis, two wars between major powers getting closer by the day. We'll see whether the investments are coming, too.

mnky9800n3• 10 months ago

Is almost like a foreign agent is in charge.

reeredfdfdf• 10 months ago

Yep, most things Trump does make sense if we assume he's a Russian puppet. Russia really wants to divide West, to keep world hooked on fossil fuels, and to undermine democracy everywhere.

WJW2• 10 months ago

There are plenty of other explanations that fit the facts. This whole "Trump is a foreign agent" thing is just like the "twin towers were brought down by the CIA" conspiracy: people don't want to believe their own country could be so broken as to let this happen, and so it must have been some planned action by a group they hate.

AndyMcConachie• 10 months ago

Trump is 100% American.

I wish people who said things like this, or who believed that Trump is/was a Russian agent could see how silly and racist they look. America's problems are not caused by foreigners. They're caused by Americans.

The xenophobia exhibited by sentiments such as this simply demonstrate hatred and ignorance of the world outside of the USA, and demonstrate an incapacity to critically evaluate American culture and history.

trhway3• 10 months ago

to be invested in the US

to invest in US (i.e. to buy a piece of US) one has to sell something to US to get dollars while not buying US products in return, ie. an US trade deficit is needed. And that at the same time while US is introducing tariffs to reduce the said trace deficit.

kronicum20252• 10 months ago

You assume that the current admin is not simply asking for gifts.

Yoric5• 10 months ago

We live in an economy that is highly virtualized, where the same unit of currency can be used several times simultaneously to borrow, lend, re-borrow, etc. so I'm not sure it's that simple.

pjc504• 10 months ago

It's a personal shakedown. What they're actually asking for is this: https://www.theverge.com/news/737757/apple-president-donald-...

Being an unreasonable, unmeetable deal on paper is just a feature. You're not supposed to meet the text of the deal. You're supposed to get under the table and ask "how can we facilitate this?" while palming a hundred dollar bill. It's like a police shakedown in less stable countries.

A more serious question for Korea is the US military protection against North Korea and/or China. They may yet end up in the unthinkable alliance with their historic enemy, Japan.

palmfacehn10• 10 months ago

Lee Jae-myung is seeking closer relations with the PRC. I view it as part of the missing context to this spat. These events preceded the US administration's actions.

https://world.kbs.co.kr/service/news_view.htm?Seq_Code=18451...

throwoutway• 10 months ago

"require more or less the entire world's GDP to be invested in the US for several consecutive years"

Whoever wrote that is making stuff up now, even worse than Sam Altman asking for trillions of dollars to build data centers

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-seeks-trillions-of-do...

derelicta2• 10 months ago

It's a shame SK is a vassal state. Koreans deserve better than serving thankless americans.

Animats2• 10 months ago

On November 5, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether Trump even has the authority to impose tariffs. Nobody should make a deal until that's decided.

curiousgal• 10 months ago

Hes been stacking the Supreme Court for years, how do you think that will go?

epolanski4• 10 months ago

To me, an European, what's troubling about US is the amount of power the presidential office has. It's reaching disturbing levels under this administration.

I'm Italian, used to our president mostly approving laws, commanding the armed forces (in theory, not in practice) and very few other things. And the best thing about our president is that it gets elected by the parliament requiring a very sensible majority. Thus pretty much all parties need to agree on one and they end up electing non-political figures (or politicians that have demonstrated high level of trust regardless of their party).

I think our system works great to be honest, and I already see the huge problems having an election-based president in Poland has with the government and president being from different parties and clashing with each other and the president vetoing for years a democratically elected government just to stir trouble.

cjs_ac• 10 months ago

In practice, the system of government in the US most closely resembles the system of government in Britain prior to Robert Walpole becoming the first prime minister in 1721. American culture places too much emphasis on talking and not enough on listening - it's very easy to claim to have the best constitution in the world if you pay no attention to what anyone else has done in the past two and a half centuries.

broken-kebab• 10 months ago

president vetoing for years a democratically elected government

I guess the president is democratically elected too. Clashing between political parties is normal, and one can argue that a system which makes them limit each other is just fine. The current layout (parliament majority belongs to A, the president is of B) may reverse in future. And then the same people who now claim that president's vetoes should be abolished may start to see it in a very different light.

pjc504• 10 months ago

Italian system is multi-party system with hybrid proportional representation. Very different.

The US operates on a "separation of powers" FPTP winner-takes-all system: once one party has lined up control of both houses, the Presidency and the Supreme Court, they can do almost anything, and (thanks to SCOTUS control) without regard to constitutional legality.

The last remaining bulwark is the Democrat states, which is why Federal troops have been sent in to intimidate them.

Animats2• 10 months ago

To me, an European, what's troubling about US is the amount of power the presidential office has. It's reaching disturbing levels under this administration.

It has. No US president ever went this far before. Past US presidents have made remarks such as "If I'd tried to do that, I would have been impeached".

Congress has more power than the President but the current members of congress are not inclined to use it against Trump. Or at all.

vintermann2• 10 months ago

Yes, who knows, maybe the Supreme Court Royale Of The United Monarchy will restrain the monarch.

butifnot0701• 10 months ago

Also Trump asked for 90% of the profit from investment? If that's the case then that is not investment at all.

nosianu3• 10 months ago

Protection money. Pay or we will withdraw our military support.

psyklic• 10 months ago

Also Trump asked to direct where the investment goes himself. It looks more like a gift than an investment.

orwin3• 10 months ago

What's missing from this is China making a lot of soft calls to SK, basically saying 'we like you, we can pressure NK into a more peaceful position, invest with us, we're all Asians', and SK seems to be responding positively.

SK being closer to China would be a game changer for geopolitics, and they would need _very strong_ guarantees from China, so strong I don't think it's possible in the short term (unless NK has a regime change).

Mr_Minderbinder• 10 months ago

Do not assume that the rest of the world follows the US view of ethnic identity. Groups that would all be classified under “Asian” in the US would be considered different races in China. Regardless it is true that the PRC, even despite political differences, would be more in tune with the ROK culturally due to the long history of Korea falling under the influence of the Sinosphere which is something the United States should be more wary of as a competitive disadvantage when trying to maintain influence over the region.

ultim8k• 10 months ago

They should effectively immediately freeze and potentially cancel any Korean investment in US and investigate all US companies based in their country. US behaving rogue should not go unpunished.

manoDev• 10 months ago

If you think being an US antagonist is bad, try being an ally.

South Korea, Japan, Philippines, are all proxy states and hostages to the US defense budget.

pessimizer• 10 months ago

I'm starting to think that HNs soft prohibition against politics only applies to women and black people talking about their experiences in tech (disappeared.) At least four or five of these non-news items that just serve for endless anti-administration comments are hitting the front page every day. The Wikipedia page for goddamn Horst Wessel almost hit the front page last night, because according to people with George W. Bush's politics, everybody is a Nazi.

No, South Korea's new president saying something about an unfavorable trade treaty that hasn't happened yet is not news. Their last president declared martial law because he declared that the opposition party was subverted by Russian propaganda. The NYT, as they do, pretended not to know that it was wrong because US interests were hoping it would succeed.

And when you rail about how awful it was to raid a factory where Koreans on visas that didn't allow them to do physical work were doing physical work, and where one of them had been killed and another worker not from Korea cut in half in an accident; a site that was being reported over and over again for safety and workers rights violations, consider how that makes working people think of you.

Reference, notorious Nazi outlet The American Prospect: Following ICE Raid in Georgia, Concerns Raised About Human Trafficking at Hyundai https://prospect.org/justice/2025-09-08-ice-raid-georgia-pla...

Why do the outlets that you get your news from simply ignore things? Simply choose not to report on them? Instead we get "Somebody says something." You shouldn't see a story like that being reported as news unless there is nothing else going on. Israel is killing everyone in Gaza City right now.

But tariffs, though. Protectionism! Grover Norquist is smiling in Hell.

That being said, I understand that a lot of people are not from, in, or have any loyalty to the US. But US policy is not made for you. We've hollowed out our working population, and kept them alive with credit. America itself has to deleverage. AI is not going to save us, because it is stupid, and wringing productivity gains from it will be difficult and will not give us any relative advantage because it will be cheap to imitate. That's a couple trillion that we can expect to be wiped out in the very short term future. We need to take some medicine now (the wildly overvalued dollar has been our heroin for 50 years), and anyone who has been relying on US debt (whether in the form of US deficit spending on defense, or otherwise) to float their economies has to get off the teat.

We're a bad influence on SK anyway, and should never have been there. If they want to stop investing in the US they're free to, they're just going to feel it when they try to export to the US. If your economy will collapse when that happens, it's because your economy is making out better than our economy. Also, it's nothing like the IMF crisis to insist on a favorable trade deal. US elites have been bribed by ownership in foreign concerns not to insist. It'll still work - look at the people in office now, they love a bribe - but you have to renegotiate. That's how dirty business works; your counterparties are as trustworthy as the leverage you have over them. Nobody is going to cry over you being screwed because the people you bribed before are out of power.

motbus3• 10 months ago

I am stupid. Why there is no economical block being discussed to nullify or reduce those effects?

Xorakios• 10 months ago

Since SCMP was confiscated by the CCP it is constantly writing stories that undermine Korea, Japan and Australia, primarily for US and European audiences.

There are individual humans, and certainly mainly companies and countries, that could invest $350billion in the USA or the EU and not be destroyed. Buying land, building, expanding manufacturing or investing in new companies generally is considered a good thing!

South Korea's President says US investment demands would spark financial crisis

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