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.
> 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?
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.
IMHO the situation is this: Are your actions make Trump feel good? The feeling can be induced by making him richer or boost his ego.
Those "X country will invest in US" stuff are about boosting his ego through good press. No one follows up anything, they use the "flood the zone" strategy, which doesn't allow the public to have long attention span.
Also, it appears that Trump likes numbers around $600B. Everyone is "investing" around $600B, even companies like Apple. When Mark Zuckerberg was asked what Meta invests, he threw the same number and later was caught ona hot mic asking Trump if he liked the number as he admitted that he was not prepared. So yes, just say you are investing $600B in USA thanks to Trump and smile to the cameras. Don't worry about the money, this is for boosting his ego and not about the money. Actually investing is dangerous, if it goes bad(like with factory incident) it creates problems for his campaign, helps his opponents and may hurt his ego, just do the show no need to complicate things.
If you want to do the money thing, you invest in his crypto or donate to his campaign etc.
> 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.
> Could the US pledge 20% (6000 billion) to some other country?
Maybe to destroy it? :)
$6T is in the ballpark of the costs of the Afghanistan and Gulf War episode II (+subsequent occupation) foreign policy adventures.
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...
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.
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.
Russia never sent a war declaration to Ukraine. It's not legally a war (that's why Putin and cronies call it 'special operation')
What the hell. Just because it's not called by a country like that doesn't mean it is one.
hence "illegal". A legal war have a war declaration and an explicit casus Belli (regime change, "removing terrorist", "protecting the civilians" etc)
>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.
Subs are definitely australia's best choice here. Subs are king of the ocean and are by far the best tool for enforcing territorial claims and warding off harassment of domestic vessels or harassment along international trading lanes at sea.
Thats not the primary budget issue in France and UK.
> mostly due to the cost of funding the defense of the illegal war in Ukraine
What is a "legal" war supposed to be?
A war would be legal when the _casus belli_ leading up to it would be a non-military action.
For example, Egypt might have casus belli if Sudan stopped the Nile's flow, a non military action with significant impact.
War is illegal under the international law for all UN member states. The main exceptions are self defense or when authorized by the UN Security Council.
Of course, nobody really cares about that.
Was the idea here that because the UN declares that war is illegal, that no country will do war anymore?
I mean, wtf.
After WW1 and WW2 and with the threat of nuclear war, people were willing to try any amount of talking as a less horrific option.
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.
Arrest of illegal workers that is
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.
Hope you speak Korean! Straight from the horse's mouth. [0] The companies themselves were well aware they were working illegally. People were even doing visa runs to chain them, it doesn't get much more blatant then that.
It's pretty obvious and not a real point of contention. Being honest about this does not support the raid, and acting as if it does helps nobody and only hurts.
[0] https://www.teamblind.com/kr/post/%ED%98%84%EC%B0%A8-%EC%97%...
You have posed a reasonable question with good intentions. A simple Google search reveals:
>U.S. authorities said some of the detained Korean workers had illegally crossed the U.S. border, while others entered legally but had expired visas or entered on visa waivers that prohibited them from working.
From PBS, a source with a well known editorial stance against the current administration.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/south-korean-workers-retu...
>Like many of the Koreans who were working there, advocates and lawyers representing the non-Korean workers caught up in the raid say that some who were detained had legal authorization to work in the United States.
LA Times, similar
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-09-14/famili...
With any of these contentious partisan issues it is important to be wary of cherry picking. Typically events are selectively reported to fit a given partisan agenda.
It would be extreme to believe that entire groups are being arbitrarily detained and deported. Similarly, it isn't unreasonable to expect mistakes to be made. The reasonable thing to do with extreme claims such as the ones made in this thread is to do a simple Google search before engaging in partisan flames. It has become almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion here on any topic which may tangentially involve Trump.
> "illegally crossed the U.S. border"
What, precisely, does this mean? I don't think it means "crossed from Mexico or arrived on a small boat". I think it might actually mean "at the border interview, they said the purpose of their visit to the facility was 'business meetings' rather than 'work'", and the legality hinges on the precise knife edge of the W word.
It would be really, really useful to clarify exactly what the rules are for someone entering the US under a visa waiver for business purposes are, because I don't want to see my co-workers thrown in a gulag.
Thanks for your comment and sources. I've found similar information already. What I was really looking for was, say, an in-depth legal analysis of B1 visas and visa waivers.
But as far as I can tell now, there's not any really clear definition of what counts as work under those visa (waivers), and the ambiguity was tolerated by all parties. So, in effect, the only reasoning is (like always) "this is illegal because we say so".
Thanks again for the info.
It's almost impossible because one side goes into a tizzy when Trump's name is mentioned, then the other side or just people in the middle like you have to calmly layout their argument with evidence.
There is one side that makes it impossible. Let's not confuse that.
Agreed. That's what makes it so inane.
I don't generally favor Trump's policies or the opposition's. Yet it is impossible to have a discussion here without providing explicit disclaimers. Even with those disclaimers, we're constantly brigaded with red-herrings, non-sequiturs and ridiculous claims tilting at what is incorrectly perceived as Trump support.
It is difficult to even criticize Trump's policies, unless the criticism is one of the curated forms prescribed by the outrage-o-sphere.
> It is difficult to even criticize Trump's policies
Are you serious?
this comment is troubling, as I understand they all had visas to work temporarily in building the facility
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?
Visas are granted to individuals not companies. Working outside your visa status is illegal in most developed countries.
The issue here was that subcontracting firms arranged to bring hundreds of people from South Korean. SK companies, including LG Energy Solution, reportedly advised workers and subcontracting firms to use the ESTA visa waiver, even after other visa applications had been repeatedly rejected.
If that’s not illegal, perhaps the legal system needs revamping. And blaming the workers in a situation like that is immoral scapegoating, pure and simple. It’s very on-brand for the US conception of labor rights, though.
> If that’s not illegal, perhaps the legal system needs revamping.
Advising people to commit visa fraud might well be illegal under US law, but given that it all happened in SK, would SK be interested in extraditing them? And would the US taxpayer support spending what that costs?
Knowingly hiring visa fraudsters is probably illegal, but proving intent would be difficult. And if you lower the burden of proof too far then companies will find any excuse to not hire non-white people, which probably isn't what you want.
The ESTA application emphasizes that it's personal and the conditions you have to comply with. I think that's well and good - if anything I think it would be better to scrap the H1-B system of tying people's work visas to specific jobs, that's a big part of what leads to immigration suppressing wages.
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Strange, how they always seem to 'forget' that part
What specific illegal activity was happening? Honest question, I’ve not seen any reference to such a thing before your and the other guy’s comment.
>The individuals arrested during the operation were found to be working illegally, in violation of the terms of their visas and/or statuses. People on short-term or recreational visas are not authorized to work in the U.S.
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-leads-multi-agency-ope...
That is wrong.
Summary: https://www.hooyou.com/b1-visa/b1-activities.html
I myself once worked for a large German company at a large US software company, porting code to my company's platform. After a few flights back home to Germany and back immigration took me into the backroom, and I described in detail what I did. They stamped my passport and let me in for another 6 months of that work. I did that for a year before switching to another visa. It also worked out because I never even tried the slightest evasion and gave them everything I got, it's not like I cared, if I had been sent back, so what, I had no desire to immigrate. I'm sure under the exact same circumstances somebody giving them a worse impression of hiding something might not have been approved. But in any case, it's definitely legal, you CAN do some kinds of actual work on just a B1, even for an entire year.
It was legal, because I still was 100% employed and paid in Germany, and the job could not be done otherwise, the US company would not send us their source code.
Similarly, in the context of the Korean raid.
One other important point you neglect is that from what I read the legality of the activities were never even questioned to begin with! They simply arrested everyone. They did not know what they wer4e doing, they just needed the arrest numbers because ICE is under pressure themselves. They did not even have any interpreters. That makes any argument about the legality useless, since it didn't even matter for the arrests.
The parent comment asked what the alleged illegal activity was, and I provided a primary source straight from ICE. I'm not interested in debating your anecdotal experience or speculation. Whether they're wrong is for the courts to decide. I'm sure we'll hear about it soon enough.
You are attempting to shift the goalpost after I countered your wrong assertion directly. You wrote a short and very specific post, it is still there.
It does not matter that you quoted the ICE, not these days with all the lies, and since they never checked the people they arrested if they actually violated anything to begin with, that quote is useless. There is enough background information available about how that raid went off. They did not check before taking every single one of those people away.
And
> "People on short-term or recreational visas are not authorized to work in the U.S."
is just plain wrong (for B1, but also ESTA -- https://www.nnuimmigration.com/esta-business/ "Incidental business activity"), no matter whom you quote!
Your attempt to dismiss it based on me providing additional proof in form of an immigration-encounter directly countering your assertion is noted, but telling.
In addition, it should never come to having to go to the courts in the first place!! Taking away likely lawfully acting people in handcuffs to a very uncomfortable stay in ICE custody already causes severe damage, no court can undo that!
The only reason they can get away with it for the moment is because South Korea needs the military cooperation because of increasing threats at home.
But these methods look more like those of the mafia than that of a civilized state.
I'm saying that while not even minding one bit that/if the US now acts against illegal immigration, I never understood why they just let it happen for decades. I understand certain businesses did well with very low-cost labor that they could easily control and exploit due to the illegal status of the workers. The problem is that they now go far beyond that, because of the administrations desire for numbers and headlines, and pictures.
And if you have to rely on getting your rights through the courts you already lost - the system is expensive, time-consuming, and slow. Getting exonerated later after you were dragged away and put into prison clothing does not undo the damage! Having to go to court is additional punishment for normal people.
No, the parent comment asked for what the illegal activity was, of which we don't know of any, because nobody has proven any. You're talking about alleged illegal activity, and given the lack of trust in the US government right now, that doesn't carry a lot of water.