South Korea's foreign minister is considering a trip to the U.S. to meet with the Trump administration after hundreds of South Korean nationals were arrested in Georgia this week at an electric vehicle battery plant.
"We are deeply concerned and feel a heavy sense of responsibility over the arrests of our nationals," Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said at an emergency meeting in Seoul.
He said South Korean President Lee Jae Myung called for all-out efforts to swiftly resolve the matter, "stressing that the rights and interests of South Korean nationals and the business operations of South Korean companies investing in the United States must not be infringed upon."
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals, in a raid Thursday at a massive electric vehicle battery plant under construction in Ellabell, Ga. The plant is a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution.
"This operation underscores our commitment to protecting jobs for Georgians and Americans," said Steven Schrank, special agent in charge of homeland security investigations for Georgia and Alabama, during a news conference announcing the operation. "We are sending a clear and unequivocal message that those who exploit our workforce, undermine our economy and violate federal laws will be held accountable."
He said it was not an operation where agents simply rounded up people and put them on buses, but the result of a months-long investigation. The workers, Schrank said, were either illegally present in the U.S. or working unlawfully.
The arrests add to tension with a key ally at a time when President Trump has been pushing for trade deals and more South Korean investment in the U.S. Hyundai also has an auto plant in Montgomery, Ala., and has announced plans to invest more than $5 billion in a steel plant in Louisiana.
"I would say that they were illegal aliens, and ICE was just doing its job," Trump said when asked about the raid at the White House on Friday.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia says the raid raises questions about both the president's immigration strategy and how the firms were able to allegedly employ workers without proper documentation.

”I'm no trader, but a quick look at the GRZZX 5-year chart shows a steady decline from about $11.00 in 9/2020 to about $5.00 now. Maybe just to make the worth of the fund look a little better?”

You have freedom of choice, exercise it.

Hundreds of workers at a factory being built in Georgia to make car batteries for Hyundai and Kia electric vehicles were detained in a huge raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) on Thursday that stopped construction.
The facility is part of what would be the biggest industrial investment in the state’s history and had been hailed as a huge boost for the economy by Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp.
About 475 workers were arrested, according to US immigration officials on Friday, the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which was created in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US in New York and Washington DC.
However, the Korea Economic Daily earlier had reported about 560 workers at the Hyundai facility and LG Energy Solution (LGES), had been detained, citing unidentified industry sources. About 300 are South Korean nationals, according to local media reports. Hyundai Motor is a South Korean automotive company but has many international plants.
The raid on Thursday has dealt a setback to the company’s substantial project in Georgia and was a dramatic iteration of the Trump administration’s harsh crackdown on immigrants in the US.
It also showed the disruptive impact that Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda is having on businesses, even as the White House tries to spur more inflows from foreign investors.
South Korea’s foreign ministry said that “many of our nationals” had been detained and expressed concern about the impact of the raid.
The battery production facility, a joint venture between South Korean battery maker LGES and Hyundai Motor, was due to start operations at the end of this year, according to LGES, to power electric vehicles.
The battery factory is part of Hyundai’s $12.6bn investments in Georgia, including the automaker’s just-opened car factory, in what would be “the largest economic development project in the state’s history” and is part of a bigger investment in US industry by the South Korean company, announced in March as Trump was ramping up tariffs.

Quietness in the stock market is a sign of a topping condition for prices. This phenomenon works this way because after an uptrend, people feel more confident, everyone is feeling fine, there are no perceived problems, and no need to get aggressive or ambitious with one’s trading. So price and breadth data show that quietness. But after a decline, people get more panicky, and that shows up with louder breadth numbers.
This week's chart shows an indicator which is a derivative of the McClellan Oscillator which my parents created back in 1969. The indicator looks at the Oscillator's values over the preceding 15 trading days, to see what the total range of values is. High readings mean that the Oscillator has been moving a lot, which reflects a more violent condition in the breadth numbers associated with a bottoming condition. But low readings like the one we see right now means everything is calm, which can be a topping condition.

@Crash- Actually, I found a pic which would have guaranteed  that you would skip lunch, but I didn't have the heart to do that to you. :)

Stagnation: The data underscores the extent to which consumers and businesses are struggling to accommodate the weight of tariffs, stubborn inflation, the decline in America’s crucial immigrant workforce and overall economic uncertainty.