"If you want to successfully sell in the United States, build here. Build here. If you want to access our markets, hire our workers and do it here."
From the podium, Howard Lutnick repeated "Build here" twice. The U.S. Commerce Secretary serves as the central channel in the Trump administration's tariff and strategic investment negotiations. He is the figure who rebuilt Cantor Fitzgerald after losing 658 employees in the 9/11 attacks. Recently, leading follow-up consultations on Korea-U.S. trade and tariff negotiations alongside Korean Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan, he has emerged as the key U.S. counterpart shaping the implementation framework for the $350 billion strategic investment package directed at the United States.
"Build here" was the doctrine he delivered to global capital gathered at the SelectUSA Investment Summit. SelectUSA is the world's largest foreign direct investment (FDI) event, hosted annually by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The venue was the Gaylord National Resort on the banks of the Potomac, where a 19-story glass atrium overlooks the river and Washington, D.C. beyond. In the spring, two months before the July 4 celebration of America's 250th anniversary, the United States summoned the capital it would need for the next 250 years. Some 5,500 people from more than 100 countries gathered. And economic development chiefs from across America welcomed them. From federal to state, county, and city — they spoke with one voice on a single stage. And among the largest foreign delegations in the audience was Korea.
Why Now
The venue felt closer to a concert hall than a trade fair. Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina. The banner raised by states across America's manufacturing belt was not "Made in America" but "Build It Here." Not "buy American" — build in America. It was a message demanding the physical relocation of capital.
More than a year into the second Trump administration, tariffs have once again moved to the center of Korean corporate income statements. Securing a U.S. production base is no longer a strategic option but a precondition for doing business.
There is something striking about all this. It is unfolding alongside record highs in the Korean stock market. On the 13th, Morgan Stanley set its KOSPI target at 9,500, leaving open the possibility of breaking through the 10,000 mark in a bull-case scenario. The keyword in the report was "the durability of structural growth and reform."
While Seoul's capital markets boil, part of that same capital is searching for its next destination in Washington. This is not a contradiction. It is a signal that Korean firms have stepped up their capacity to deploy capital globally, and at the same time a sign of pressure to fill abroad some of the growth that has become difficult to find at home.
So How Do You Build It
"You need power? We will build it for you. You need workers? We will make a deal with the local universities, and we will train them for you."
In the same keynote, Secretary Lutnick said the Commerce Department would directly resolve the two bottlenecks foreign capital most often runs into when entering the United States: power and labor.
But Korean companies that have already built on American soil know better. The clock on the ground runs differently.
Building a factory in the United States is by no means a copy-and-paste of how things are built in Asia. Site selection, incentives, and labor costs remain critical variables. But the decisive variables are the power interconnection schedule, environmental impact assessments, multi-layered permitting, and the phased securing of a skilled workforce. And whether all of these align with the operating timeline that headquarters has promised state governments.
Power, in particular, is such a case. It is the very same power Lutnick promised to "build for you." Even after sites are purchased, incentives negotiated, and design completed, cases are increasing where transmission line energization slips 12 months — sometimes as long as 24 months — behind the headquarters timeline. Incentives are tied to hiring, production, and investment milestones. When the power schedule wavers, the dominoes start falling behind it.
Last comes the workforce. In the early operating phase, skilled personnel from Korean headquarters must be on site for a certain period. Equipment setup, transfer of operating know-how, line stabilization. If this stage falters, everything that follows falters with it. A "trainable local workforce" and a "workable visa pathway" — both must be in place for a project to stay on schedule. That means there are stages clearly not filled by partnerships with local universities alone.
Between Lutnick's promise and the clock on the ground, in that gap of 12 to 24 months, Korean corporate capital sits tied up.
The Same Week, Another Scene in Washington
On the 8th, just after SelectUSA wrapped up. Lutnick, who had stood on stage three days earlier, this time faced Minister Kim Jung-kwan at the Commerce Department building. The Korea-U.S. Shipbuilding Partnership Initiative (KUSPI) memorandum of understanding. "MASGA (Make American Shipbuilding Great Again)" is a Korean coinage borrowing from Trump's "MAGA" slogan, but the structure inside is a negotiation over how to combine shipbuilding — the field Korea knows best — with the rebuilding of American industry. After autos, semiconductors, and batteries, shipbuilding has now entered as a new axis of cooperation with the United States. It also means one more invoice has been added to Korea's tab.
The same week in Seoul. At the State Council meeting on the 12th, President Lee Jae-myung publicly instructed Minister Kim to "consult in advance with the foreign ministry and the national security office on specifics, and coordinate well with other ministries beforehand." The backdrop was criticism that the contents of the Washington negotiations had not been sufficiently shared with the foreign ministry and others.
What the two scenes point to together is clear. The momentum of Korean capital headed to the United States cannot be created by companies alone. Corporate capital deployment, the government's diplomatic, trade, and security lines, and the U.S. federal, state, and local levels. Only when these three layered clocks tick to the same beat does a project come together. What we lack is not capital, not will, not technology. It is the coordination muscle to keep that beat.
Momentum, or Inertia
The real question we should be asking is not "Should we go to the United States?" The direction has already been set — by tariffs, by customers' demands for local production, by the strings of security negotiations. The real question lies elsewhere. How do we coherently coordinate the size, speed, and recovery timing of capital flowing to the United States with Korea's other capital deployments scattered across China, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East?
Tensions in Hormuz, U.S.-China decoupling, the prolonged front in Ukraine, the security calculus on the Korean Peninsula. With surfaces of risk vibrating simultaneously, what is the appropriate size of the American bet? Going too deep in one place narrows the room to maneuver elsewhere. Part of Morgan Stanley's confidence in a 9,500 KOSPI, in fact, leans on the scenario in which these bets ultimately pay off.
Within "momentum" lie two meanings together. The momentum that creates a flow. And the inertia that gets pushed along by it. The two are not the same.
Leaving Washington, D.C., I crossed the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. The only bridge in America where three jurisdictions — Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia — meet on a single span. The Uber driver let slip a remark. "People here are one of two kinds. They came to build a business, or they came to grab even a piece of one."
At the very moment the KOSPI is setting new record highs, part of Korea's capital is heading to Washington, to Texas, to Georgia. Whether that is momentum we have created on our own terms, or inertia pushing us along under outside pressure. The answer will be decided not in Washington, but ultimately in conference rooms in Seoul — at the tables where working-level staff and executives sit across from each other to chart the long-term growth and success of Korean firms. May it be decided well.
She is...
A director at Cushman & Wakefield Korea and head of the Global Korea Desk.
