One important political goal of the US administration under Donald Trump is to bring industrial manufacturing back to America after decades of offshoring. This is also reflected in the US government’s investment in the struggling chip manufacturer Intel. The US government paid $8.9 billion (€7.56 billion) for a 10 percent stake, although this is not new money. Under President Biden, Intel was already promised support through the CHIPS and Science Act, but only in tranches after certain milestones had been reached.
Attracting more industrial companies to the US and thereby creating jobs is important for a president who was carried to the White House by the MAGA movement and supported by many blue-collar workers. His tariffs against countries from which the US imports too much, and his use of punitive sanctions to force them to build production facilities in the US, are another measure designed to appease his electorate.
But that could have come to a sudden halt. Because their own political goals got in the way. At the same time, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE has been instructed to deport 3,000 immigrants without residence permits every day. In order to achieve these aggressive figures, ICE occasionally overshoots the mark.
On September 4, 2025, ICE arrived at a factory under construction belonging to South Korean car manufacturer Hyundai in the US state of Georgia and arrested almost 500 workers there, more than 300 of whom were South Korean nationals, 3 Japanese, and 10 Chinese. They were held for several days in detention camps under the worst conditions. They were kept in chains most of the time, with their hands tied around their waists, could only drink water by licking it up, and had to use toilets that had no partitions and only a hole. As it turns out, the vast majority of those arrested by ICE had valid work visas.
The diplomatic and economic repercussions are devastating. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung intervened with US President Trump. After seven days and cover-up attempts by ICE (the press release that had already been published was changed again), South Korea now wants to appeal to the International Court of Human Rights for crimes against humanity committed by the US against South Korean citizens.
And ICE knows they have made a serious mistake, because the statements about how many of those arrested were illegal immigrants are constantly changing and information is scarce. According to Hyundai, construction work on the factory in Republican-led Georgia will resume in 2026 at the earliest. However, Hyundai is keeping all options open, including the possibility that the project will not be resumed.
South Korean workers will think twice about returning to the US to work, and it remains to be seen whether other volunteers with the same expertise will be found. The construction of the plant itself is only part of the investment. The US also needs the appropriate foreign specialists to train domestic workers on the facilities. This will now be difficult and, above all, will be delayed by months or years.
Construction work on 22 other industrial facilities owned by South Korean companies in the US has also been temporarily halted. South Korea was the sixth largest trading partner of the US in 2024 and announced in the summer that it would invest $350 billion (€298 billion) in the US over the next few years. This move has also prompted other countries to rethink their investment policies in the US.
For the conservative and religious US state of Georgia, which has voted for the Republican candidate 12 times in the last 16 presidential elections since 1964, including the last two times in 1992 and 2020, this is a disaster. This factory was supposed to create 8,500 jobs, which, if they come at all, will be very late in coming.
What is certain is that the chaos within the US government has reached another peak, and voters who expected the Trump administration to create jobs and improve their living conditions are particularly affected.
I myself can see the uncertainty that such news and other reports cause among visitors from other countries. Several members of my delegation mentioned that participants in delegation trips had canceled because they found the situation too uncertain and did not want to find themselves in a position where they could be deported. One Swiss delegation was so unsettled that instead of bringing chocolate from their home country, they preferred to buy a packet locally as a souvenir because they were afraid of getting into trouble at the airport. The uncertainty caused by the current US administration is real.