South Korea’s recent pressure campaign against American companies should serve as a warning to policymakers in Washington: Foreign governments are increasingly using regulation as a weapon against successful U.S. firms. It’s time to push back on them.
Last month, Republican lawmakers raised concerns about the South Korean government’s treatment of American tech companies operating in the country. Their letter highlighted threats of punitive fines, possible business-license actions, and an expansive investigation into a data breach involving the U.S.-based e-commerce giant Coupang.
To Seoul’s credit, officials have since signaled that they will avoid discriminatory treatment toward American firms. But the broader issue remains unresolved. Around the world, governments are taking aim squarely at America’s most competitive industries — especially technology, digital commerce, and advanced services.
US IS INSUFFICIENTLY PREPARED FOR NORTH KOREA TO USE A TACTICAL NUKE AGAINST SOUTHERN NEIGHBORS
For decades, policymakers focused primarily on traditional international issues such as trade policy, security agreements, and diplomatic alliances. Today, the threats to America increasingly come from regulatory warfare: selective antitrust enforcement, politically motivated investigations, digital services taxes, burdensome compliance mandates, and data-localization rules designed to handicap foreign competitors.
These measures carry enormous economic costs for American workers, consumers, and investors. Recent estimates suggest that foreign regulatory actions targeting U.S. digital and e-commerce firms could cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. That burden ultimately falls on households through lower growth, weaker investment returns, and reduced competitiveness.
The European Union has become perhaps the most visible practitioner of this approach, routinely targeting major American firms with massive fines and regulations that often seem less about protecting consumers than restraining successful U.S. companies. South Korea risks moving in a similar direction.
The Korea Fair Trade Commission has already developed a reputation for aggressively targeting American technology firms, including Google and Qualcomm. Now, Korean authorities appear to be escalating scrutiny of Coupang following a data breach that the company says affected roughly 3,000 accounts and did not expose financial information. Yet the response reportedly involved more than a dozen government agencies, robustly villainizing the e-commerce company.
None of this means American companies should be exempt from legitimate laws or consumer protections abroad. But enforcement should be transparent, proportional, and applied equally to domestic and foreign firms alike. When governments use regulation as an economic weapon, the United States should treat it as a trade issue — because that is exactly what it is.
The Trump administration has made clear that it intends to pursue a more assertive approach to defending American economic interests. That should include confronting regulatory attacks on U.S. businesses overseas. Washington cannot afford to ignore foreign efforts to weaken the country’s most innovative industries through biased bureaucratic pressure.
NORTH KOREA DROPS REUNIFICATION GOAL FROM CONSTITUTION AFTER 70 YEARS
American companies remain global leaders because they build products and services that billions of people voluntarily use. Policymakers should not stand idle while foreign governments attempt to punish our success through politicized regulation.
Economic leadership depends not only on innovation itself, but on whether governments are willing to defend the innovators they produce.
Sam Raus (@SamRaus1) is the David Boaz resident writing fellow at Young Voices.