By Adam Savit
In 2013, Chinese conglomerate WH Group acquired Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the United States. In 2017, Chinese state-owned enterprise ChemChina absorbed Syngenta, one of the world's dominant seed and agrochemical companies, giving Beijing a commanding position in American crop inputs. In 2019, a South Korean company, CJ CheilJedang, spent $1.84 billion to acquire Schwan's, an iconic American frozen food firm, and today employs thousands of Americans across its U.S. affiliates.
Two of these acquisitions are national security problems. One is not. Understanding why is the essential starting point for an America First assessment of South Korea's economic relationship with the United States, and the unavoidable complication that Seoul's own economic entanglement with China introduces into it.
America First Is Not America Alone
The America First framework does not treat all foreign capital as equivalent. It asks a precise question: who ultimately controls this asset, and under what legal system does that controller operate? WH Group and ChemChina answer to a party-state whose National Intelligence Law compels cooperation with state security organs, whose doctrine of military-civil fusion erases the line between commercial and military enterprise, and whose leadership has openly designated food security and agricultural technology as arenas of strategic competition. CJ CheilJedang answers to shareholders in a democratic ally bound to the United States by a mutual defense treaty.
