great many things from the past 10 years would've been fan fiction, conspiracy theories, and slippery slope fallacies 20 years ago. for better or worse, this boring dystopia is not yet the end of history.

The value is not in the literal buildings, the value is in the people, the managers,engineers,etc and the owners who know how to run it.

The people who are hired and organized by the korean comapny. This is litterlly the logic that collapsed venezuela's oil industry after it was seized by the state.

...errrr....

I think the EU performing such an action is outside the Overton window, at least for now...

China does know that but they knew how to make the deal palatable enough for auto manufacturers (other companies too, but this one IMO is a big factor in the grand scheme[0]) to all sell out one way or another for a stake in the pie, be it cheaper manufacturing or accessing that market.

Developed countries are re-learning it but are struggling with paying the piper. By that I mean, a lot of manufacturing, especially technology based, can be dirty as heck. Doing certain widgets results in environmental costs that have to be managed or externalized[1].

[0] - I posit, that Auto manufacturers probably keep a lot of documentation around, but also have a lot of history of 'good ideas' being killed by business politics one way or another. You can glean a -lot- of manufacturing tribal knowledge being able to access any existing or new incoming data on that set of signals.

[1] - No, we should not externalize, to be clear.

You walk in and realize that there is nothing worthwile inside. The knowledge is gone or was never even there, all the inputs are gone, the process is in shambles, all you have is four walls and some bricked machinery. What now?

LOL, EU and the Dutch tried to pull this shit with Nexperia, it failed miserably and they reversed course fast.

It does introduce a dependency on South Korea's ability to defend its democracy, though.

> except one recently

> Trade is reliable

"reliable except when it isn't" is just a convoluted way of saying "unreliable"

> That doesn't happen between democracies and hasn't for generations, except for one democracy recently.

Neoliberalism and globalization is what guaranteed this. That is, Pax Americana. The US thought it was a great idea to become the reserve currency of the world, and became a net importer to spread the dollar. The dollar hegemony gave the US great influence and it defended it with its military. Becoming a net importer hollowed out the US industrial base as it moved overseas, which was fine until China speedran owning large parts of the industrial production and exportation. They also very quickly moved up the ranks of economic and geopolitical sway.

Now the US is ditching globalization for more mercantilist policies. That means the US will be less influential in a multi-polar world, as it can no longer strongarm so easily through the dollar. Trade will become more closed off as other countries rush to do the same now that they are less supported by the US military and economic influence and need to defend themselves more.

Thus, I wouldn’t discount the possibility that the EU stops cooperating as much with SK in the future

> "except one recently"

russia and {ukraine, georgia, etc}?