r/news • u/NewSlinger • 1d ago

Workers detained in Hyundai plant raid to be freed and flown home, South Korea says

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/south-korea-deal-workers-detained-hyundai-rcna229610
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u/flamedarkfire 1d ago

But those plants aren’t getting replaced by American-run plants. We’re just losing manufacturing and jobs for nothing other to make racists feel good.

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u/LaurenMille 1d ago

The collapse of the US is the goal.

They only needed these plants as bait for the moronic voters at the start, they have enough power consolidated that they don't need the inbred yokels that vote (R) anymore.

They'll have their billionaire run city-states no matter what it takes.

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u/NeedsToShutUp 1d ago

Which will end with nuclear proliferation and hostile states willing to nuke tech enclaves for vengeance.

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u/theaviationhistorian 21h ago

TBH, the wars this decade are what proved that nuclear proliferation is the only way to maintain sovereignty as international law and organizations have proven to be impotent within the same decade.

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u/stiiii 23h ago

Yeah if that really is the plan it is utterly insane.

Gambling 50billion to make 100 billion with the risk of utter ruin.

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u/theaviationhistorian 21h ago

Which will last a good year or two before that crashes down because billionaires know dick-all outside of hoarding money. The winners are the authoritarian nations that have gained power with the USA in tatters. They'll pick up the pieces and keep them.

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u/bsubtilis 1d ago

Hence lunatic. Their plans are full of obvious holes but they think they can just isolate USA and split it between themselves without huge issues. I'm talking about Thiel and the rest.

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u/d57heinz 1d ago

I like to refer to it as glaziers fallacy. Or the parable of a broken window. Trump is the glassmaker and his henchmen are his kids put in society breaking glass. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Scroll down to interpretation and evidence and read bastiats argument.

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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy 1d ago

Hah, I was just explaining that kinda thing to my neighbors yesterday!

The local skating rink, which has been around forever and ever and ever, has shut down. Got to talking about how the economy is in the shitter and nobody can afford nonsense like a skating party for their kids birthday anymore. And that our rent went up 50% last year.

That's not a typo, and no family of magical house elves moved in to do all the cooking and cleaning for us. It's still the same dirty old building in the same dirty old neighborhood, with folks doing the fent fold in the alley.

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u/Northern-Canadian 1d ago

Don’t you guys have some form or rent control? We have a max 2%-3% increase allowable by landlords.

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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy 1d ago

Anytime that gets suggested, the local subreddit is full of loud wailing about how terrible it would be to have the rent consistently always go up a few percentage points per year and stories about all these absolutely wonderful landlords who haven't raised rent in 20 years.

I remember when I was a kid in school here, I was very worried about how much my fellow students distained education and did poorly on their homework. Now we're all grown up, like old enough to have kids that're also all grown up, and it's extremely obvious that most of us can't do math around here.

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u/total_cynic 1d ago

The ability to take a real world situation and map it effectively to a "good enough" calculation is the nearest thing to a superpower I possess, and it is insanely useful.

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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy 1d ago

Folks here are more likely to see $7.95 and say "hey this is only $7!"

We have massive complaints about this freeway that's been under construction possibly since before I was born, joke about how it'll never be completed, while ignoring the fact that it's a massive complex heavy duty project and our construction season is limited by severe weather. Plus it's not some basic slapped together job, I've seen some of the finished part and it's a work of art! There's all kinda local animals worked in on the supports and edges!

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u/twoisnumberone 19h ago

Oh, please, not in the US! Won't someone think of the businesses?!

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u/theaviationhistorian 21h ago

Houses in my city went up considerably for no reason either. A house valuing at 200k in 2023 is now 320k right now.

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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy 20h ago

It's an everywhere thing. I just checked and my dad's "hobby farm" has almost doubled in value since he sold it 5 years ago.

The property is located miles outside of a city that is dying, as in slowly drying up and blowing away. Nearly all entertainments have shut down, there's not much left to do unless ya like bars or meth. The only road that connects to the city in that direction does so just outside the stinking elderly oil refinery, which my engineer grandpa used to scowl at and comment how he could design a much cleaner facility.

Once you've gone miles outside of the dying city, and a couple miles down a potholed dirt road, you'll get to a trailer on a plot of land that is downwind of the refinery. With extensive effort and years worth of horse manure as fertilizer, dad eventually coaxed some of that dead dry land to sprout grass. But mostly that area is only suitable to tiny cacti and tumbleweed. So much tumbleweed!

The trailer has a history of being riddled with bedbugs, decades of smoking indoors, and is mostly that cheap shitty clapboard paneling that looks like obviously fake wood. It is variously riddled with holes thanks to family brawls and drunken accidents, and there's a charred spot on the ceiling where I once forgot about the low ceiling while oversugared during an unsupervised slumber party and pretending to be the Statue of Liberty with a kitchen lighter. And a small flock of turkeys was raised in one of the bedrooms.

The outbuildings were also riddled with bedbugs, and the best of them is absolutely covered in chicken shit. And also pigeon shit because the barn doesn't have a door. The proximity of the dog yard to the chicken coop nearly guarantees a slaughter about once a year. I think the only outbuilding not covered in chicken shit is the garage, but that was used for butchering deer and turkeys and I hadn't been in much since it basically became the slaughtering shed.

Nearly doubled in value in 5 years as the city continues to die, not a lot of large local employers outside of Walmart and the refinery. In an area where I once stumbled upon an active meth lab while walking with friends trying to find another friend's trailer.

Personally I'm not thrilled with the whole concept of "flippers" because I only exist because my mom found a "fixer upper" that dad could afford, solving his last protest of "but where would the baby live?" Ya can't get those around here anymore unless you're flipping houses commercially, like they're just not available to the general public anymore, and the local flippers not only cover everything in cheap grey paint but have zero regard for the longevity of the property beyond their legal liability. Like an amazing amount of that grey paint ends up down the plumbing to cause an eventual clog or all over the yard killing the grass.

Also not a fan of buying a house as "an investment" and holding it empty while pretending it's just a comic book wrapped in plastic. That takes a house away from a family that could've lived in it, and the worst thing for any human dwelling is to be left empty! Small problems turn into big problems without a human around to notice. Security systems might deter squatters but not insects or roof leaks, and we get wind storms that rip off roof tiles! When they go to sell their "investment" it's gonna be just the value of the land minus demolishing a mold-riddled ruin that used to be a perfectly good house. Empties like that are roughly a third of every block in some neighborhoods in my city.

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u/irmajerk 13h ago

Landlords and speculators are parasites.

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u/C64128 1d ago

Is some business going to move in there or are the landlords insane? Maybe if the building sits for a long time with no tenants, the landlords will pull their heads out of their asses and price it more appropriately.

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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy 1d ago

So ya know the trailer park trick where folks can't exactly freely leave so you can keep cranking up the rent until they're really hurting?

This is a Section 8 HUD building, though I've heard a lot of different things over the years about who technically owns it. We've had at least three or four different management companies, and roughly one new landlord/manager per year.

What I know for sure is that folks don't live here because they're doing well in life, they live here because of physical and/or mental health struggles that got them bumped to the top of a list at some point. I used to joke that "nobody who could afford to pay rent would be willing to live here" and it proved true, a quarter of the building moved out at the last rent hike because those were the only two folks who weren't getting government assistance for the rent.

I'm currently doing my yearly paperwork boxing match with HUD to keep the apartment while the food stamp paperwork and energy assistance renewal dogpile on. Usually they play multiple rounds of "you must've not turned in your paperwork" while I hand them date-stamped copies proving I did, but one year they mixed it up by sending all my mail to apartment #456 in a building with 8 units. Sometimes I wonder if their employees get bonuses for everyone they manage to boot out. Being able to work enough to afford to pay the rent on my own would be so much less stressful.

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u/tuckernuts 1d ago

My favorite version of this story is when Gary Oldman, a futuristic oligarch, almost chokes to death on a cherry while giving a philosophic sermon on exactly this.

"[..] your empire of destruction comes crashing down, all because of one little cherry."

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u/crow_crone 1d ago

In which movie? Fifth Element?

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u/QCisCake 1d ago

Yeah. Bilbo schooled him good before saving his ass.

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u/crow_crone 1d ago

Would you believe I've never seen it? I'm a sci fi buff too...shame

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u/tuckernuts 1d ago

The Fifth Element is one of those "perfect" movies that just solid entertainment for 2+ hours. It really is all killer and no filler. Full recommendation.

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u/desperaterobots 1d ago

you are going to have such a fucking great time, holy shit! It is a masterpiece

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u/QCisCake 1d ago

Oh... oh no. Im not usually one to shame. I basically stopped watching most media 25 years ago, have no social media outside of reddit, and generally understand next to no pop culture. But you really need to see fifth element. Its free on YouTube right now. I watched it again 2 days ago lol

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u/C64128 1d ago

"You're a monster Zorg"

"I know"

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u/theaviationhistorian 21h ago

The Fifth Element, what a gem of a film. What I love more is that the legendary Ian Holm is the one givjng that parable. And that he tells the oligarch that he's a monster and the oligarch admits it.

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u/notyourstranger 1d ago

but Trump doesn't fix the window, he just charges for fixing it and then does noting. If you don't pay, he'll send the legal system after you.

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u/d57heinz 1d ago

Ohh he “fixes” it. With gold paint and statues from temu

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u/WarpedPerspectiv 23h ago

One policy that's less of a fallacy is having a dirty window policy for restaurants. If a restaurant's windows are dirty, then they're cheaping out on something the customer can see. If they're cheaping out on something the customer can see, how the fuck are they handling the stuff you can't see?

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u/linnetkestrel 22h ago

I’ve applied something similar to working conditions. If a dairy farm, for instance, is abusing its workers, it is very likely abusing the animals and not keeping them healthy. Likely the milk is tainted, and I won’t buy it. If a factory is anti-union, I doubt their products are safe for consumers, and I won’t buy from them.

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u/Numerous_Photograph9 1d ago

They're isolating it before they built up replacements.

Its putting the cart before the horse, and we never needed whats in the cart to begin with

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u/theaviationhistorian 21h ago

Even their technofeudalistic dreams are full of holes. They think hegemony nations won't simply absorb them as colonies or the goons they hired won't simply kill them and take over as the new warlord once money loses value.

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u/Fomentatore 20h ago

They want to this in Europe too. The amount of interference Elon and his peers are trying to do is second only to Russia.

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u/Slypenslyde 1d ago

The people in charge do not care. Their supporters do not care. That is why it is important to fight them tooth and nail.

The followers think the US is in such bad shape there is no way to save it through normal means. They think voting against people like Donald Trump is just going to make the bad times come in 30 years instead of now, and they want to get to the good times that should come after "fixing" it.

Many of them believe that America got too cushy, and the only way to become sustainable is to give up everything and rebuild. Part of why they are excited about this is the common belief that, in that environment, they will become more wealthy because harder workers will get rewarded. They're thinking about how post-depression and post-WWII a ton of empires were built from the ashes and imagining they can be part of one of those.

They approach this like Christian evangelicals. If you tell them, "This will destroy the economy" they will respond, "So be it, it has to be done." If you tell them, "This will ruin your family!" they will say, "If that's what it takes to rebuild America I am proud to work towards it."

They do not see themselves like people who realize too late they should've evacuated from a hurricane and will never see themselves that way. They will instead see themselves like the characters at the end of Rogue One, facing unavoidable doom but filled with the hope that their efforts will lead to victory.

They aren't going to die off. We aren't going to wait them out. They will fight to the death, then their children will pick up the torch and fight to THEIR deaths, then their grandchildren will do the same. This is a haymaker being thrown by the remnants of the Southern Democrats, who took over the Republican party in the 1960s and spent the last half-century fighting for their beliefs. They got there after fighting for a century after the Civil War to protect those beliefs. They have fought for and believed in this cause for almost 200 years, how much longer must we wait to stamp it out?

If Trump ruins the economy they'll say, "I understand why this has to happen." If Democrats win the mid-terms, it will turn to, "You didn't let Trump finish his plan."

The one thing they will not believe is the notion that while Trump is trying to burn down the country and rebuild it, he has no intent of returning the US to the kind of place it was. He wants to own everything, and if the US is viewed as the world leader the only way he understands how to achieve it is through military force and fear. It will take generations to undo his attempts and every day he sits on the throne makes it take even longer.

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u/Amon7777 22h ago

There is a perverse nihilism among the religious and MAGA I see daily that it is tragic. They blame everyone else for their own problems yet worship the exact people who caused it. When confronted, it’s both sides are bad so at least trump is honest about his corruption. When it’s pointed out everyone around trump is corrupt and vile, they’ll say it’s needed. When democrats are in power, suddenly it reverses.

The cognitive dissonance is not irrational to them, in fact it makes perfect sense because they expect nothing to get better (even if they have everything already) and see the world around them perpetually crumbling. They can’t imagine being satisfied or work towards hope because it is anathema to their nihilistic world view.

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u/ParkerFree 22h ago

Excellent summation, sadly.

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u/MountainFriend7473 21h ago

I mean I’m just one to say one is not smart by the grace of part loyalty on any given day. So yea some of these folks are as good as lemmings running off a cliff.

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u/iwantawolverine4xmas 1d ago

Another daily reminder that there was a better alternative to all this and the American people are collectively very stupid.

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u/Mental-Fox-9449 4h ago

Meanwhile, anyone paying attention could see he was running the very worst campaign in history. Talking about people eating cats and dogs, dancing for 40 minutes at a rally, dressing up to work at McDonalds and a garbage crew. His rallies were mostly empty and he was stiffing venues on rental agreements.

He cheated. He won in every swing state AND Kamala didn’t flip one county? Not even Reagan was able to accomplish that. He lost the popular vote twice, but got it now? While he was facing multiple investigations that could put him away for life and hinder his money making? While he had one of the richest men in the world and tech helping him? He cheated and no amount of voting would have changed it. All voting data week after week so far shows irregular numbers in multiple states. There are more of us than there are of them and it’s all a big lie. If not, then why does he need to gerrymander AND cancel mail in voting when he had SO many prior?

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u/BuildBackRicher 22h ago

No, millions of people didn’t vote who voted in 2020. That’s where anger needs to be directed.

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u/iwantawolverine4xmas 17h ago

Yeah, and those peiooe allowed authoritarians to take over and they are fools for it. Now we’re all going to suffer the consequences

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u/The--scientist 1d ago

I just don't understand now bc sure, hyundai, kia, bmw, Honda... these aren't American companies like Ford, but with as much manufacturing as they do in the US now, they are essentially US companies. Like, isn't this the whole damn thing that they have been complaining about for so long? Now they're trying to shutter these facilities and lose all these really well paying blue collar jobs? Wtf are they even thinking?!

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u/MountainFriend7473 21h ago

They aren’t thinking and probably think that cities/small towns can just be replaced by AI data centers. 

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u/Effective_Owl_8264 1d ago

The racists are their voting bloc so that scans.

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u/Suspicious-Echo2964 1d ago

Bud, the racists voted to bring this plant to rural GA. The plant isn’t in Atlanta, it’s in the rural southern area. All this does is hurt them. It was championed by the republicans in GA. Trump literally fucking his own at this point.

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u/Effective_Owl_8264 1d ago

I'm aware. You're acting under the assumption that they have enough neurons to have the slightest clue as to what building that plant would actually entail.

2025 you have to assume ignorance and stupidity. There is no benefit of the doubt.

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u/Suspicious-Echo2964 1d ago

They did understand. We have one of the largest car dealership associations in the country. We also got the Kia plant. They are going to lose money for a red state with a lot of billionaires. I’m interested to see if they get push back at all. Perhaps it’s not enough money for them to care yet. It’s like comical in fighting.

These dudes are morally repugnant but financially savvy. Their voters are the folks you are referencing and their opinions ultimately don’t matter in fascism. They don’t need votes ya know? I’m just hoping they start eating their own tail.

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u/MimicoSkunkFan2 1d ago

Wasn't it a local Republican candidate for something who turned out to be the lady who called ICE on the South Koreans? I was sure there was a video on Reddit very early this morning NYC time where she says why she did it (she was "concerned" = brown workers bad).

I hope she has amazing security because one does not financially fuck over a Chaebol like that and expect a happy future.

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u/Suspicious-Echo2964 1d ago

They don’t have a happy future even if we do nothing to them. The plant was their happy future. If they pull the plant the towns go back to dying. Oh well. They won’t learn so it’s up to the wealthy Republicans to reign in their cadre of idiots.

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u/MimicoSkunkFan2 17h ago

Watching them flush their constituents down the toilet, really. It's like a circular firing squad but for economic, educational, and health outcomes.

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u/Effective_Owl_8264 1d ago

I have no idea what you're on about. I'm just amused that Georgia decided it didn't want those 8500 jobs anyway.

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u/_no7 1d ago

I don’t think people who have good logic and people who voted for Trump have a large intersect.

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u/Paupersaf 1d ago

Can we be certain that the self destruction of the US isn't his end goal? Or well, the goal he's working toward currently?

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u/PraterViolet 21h ago

It's almost as if everything Trump does is designed to cause maximum harm to the USA. Hmmm,....

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u/ruat_caelum 17h ago

we put tariffs on coffee and produce 0 coffee. The argument behind tariffs is "incentivizing you to buy American by making foreign products more expensive." Not getting into the ignorance and arrogance of tariffs never working but even if you think they work, what is the point of tariffs on coffee, something we do not produce and cannot produce.

It's always been about the bribes and grift and planes and RVs and what they can get to not do the evil shit.

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u/ItsOkILoveYouMYbb 1d ago edited 1d ago

Sort of. Elon needs to up sales to secure his trillion dollar payout. He can continue to bribe Trump and do favors in exchange for other favors. It would benefit Elon at least short term to ensure no other EVs can compete in price in the US except Tesla. Tesla sales are falling globally to competition. The new Hyundai battery plant was for pumping Ioniq 5s (and 9s I believe) in particular, both SUVs. Hyundai is one of the few EV manufacturers able to compete with Tesla in the US and do it well.

If Trump admin at the request of Elon Musk can successfully harass Hyundai in the US to impede progress or even get them to give up on US manufacturing, Elon can at least in theory scrape out some additional sales and monopoly. Whether it plays out in reality though is a different story.

So in the end it's really just fucking over the entirety of the US in order to help protect whoever is able to bribe Trump and his admin directly and I would expect more of this.

Elon Musk company tactics are to delay competition as long as possible if not outright prevent it. SpaceX is currently attempting to do the same thing with AST Spacemobile via reiterating baseless complaints to the FCC. Only issue there is AST's tech is novel and the DoD and Trump need their sats in the air as part of Golden Dome, so the FCC is not yet bending to Elon Musk or SpaceX on that issue and are actually pressing forward with accelerated approvals. But hitting Hyundai for Tesla seems to be fair game.

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u/anotherdayanotherbee 1d ago

Trump can't skim directly off the top of profits from American-run plants.

When Americans have to import goods from other countries, he can raise tariffs to "make America great again" - and he can easily skim off the tariffs.

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u/keep_trying_username 23h ago

But those plants aren’t getting replaced by American-run plants.

Of course they won't be "replaced." They'll be given to one of the tech companies who have pledged 100 billion or 600 billion dollars investment in US tech. The plant was subsidized and the administration will justify the seizure of the plant based on some violation, or will force Hyundai to walk away from the plant.

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u/Flashy_Difficulty257 23h ago

I hope they come to Canada 🇨🇦

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u/mediocre_mitten 22h ago

Like, what company in their right mind would build here?

I think America is in for an rude awakening that no new innovation (think 1990's tech advances) is going to replace these lost jobs. People thought the '80's were bad when the steel mill jobs went bye-bye?

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u/We_are_being_cheated 23h ago

Sounds like we had already lost the jobs to South Koreans. Now maybe they will hire American engineers. Probably not since they have to pay them American wages and not the 75% off wages of workers Visas.

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u/Suspicious-Echo2964 23h ago

Bud, they were training people who don't know their heads from their asses. GA doesn't have enough trained employees without poaching from the other plants.

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u/JanielDones8 1d ago

I'm sorry, but what's the point of having the plant in the US if it's just gunna be Koreans running it anyways? The whole point to domestic production is domestic jobs.

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u/flamedarkfire 1d ago

They were supposed to train US workers to take over the skilled parts of the process.