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Governments increasingly treat trade as a question of national security, and that shift is changing how trade itself works, according to Stephan Haggard of the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy. In this episode of Eye on Korea, he unpacks weaponized interdependence, the use of economic ties as leverage, and the major trends reshaping globalization, including de-risking and the strategies of denial meant to keep critical technologies out of adversaries’ hands. He also lays out the challenges this new landscape poses for a trade-oriented economy such as South Korea’s. Haggard also takes up the return of industrial policy, a tool with deep roots in Korea’s development, and the challenges that arise when two allies embrace and execute it at the same time. He argues that industrial policy works less as a catalyst than as a way for the government and private sector to come together in pursuit of growth. Korean firms continue to scan the U.S. market for conventional investment and business opportunities, but a second layer of government-linked investment, including the potential Alaska LNG pipeline, now sits on top of that private activity. Here, he calls two Korean decisions wise: setting up a dedicated entity to oversee those investments and capping those investments yearly. He also makes the case that Korea holds a strong hand in any negotiation over shipbuilding investment. The conversation also turns to why Haggard sees alliances as icebergs, with the formal commitment above the surface and a much larger web of connections below it. Between the United States and Korea, he says, those military and everyday connections run extremely deep and show up daily. Stephan Haggard is Research Professor and Lawrence and Sallye Krause Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy and Director Emeritus of its Korea-Pacific Program. He is also Research Director for Democracy and Global Governance at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. He is a member of KEI’s Board of Directors, and his books include Developmental States (Cambridge, 2018) and Backsliding: Democratic Regress in the Contemporary World (Cambridge, 2021) with Robert Kaufman. Like and subscribe to the Korea Economic Institute of America on YouTube for more U.S.-South Korea news, analysis, politics and more! Social Links: Website: https://keia.org/ LinkedIn:   / korea-economic-institute-of-america   Facebook:   / koreaeconinstitute   Instagram:   / koreaeconinst   Twitter/X: https://x.com/koreaeconinst [This material is distributed by KEI on behalf of the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, DC.] ________________________________________ Eye on Korea is distributed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 License, which can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... World Economic Forum, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Cho's, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... 한국정책방송원, KOGL Type 1, via Wikimedia Commons 대한민국정부, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By SarahTz - https://www.flickr.com/photos/1204200..., CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... By Tiger 7253 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...