The House Judiciary Committee released a report saying South Korea discriminated against Coupang and other U.S. companies. A government discriminated against businesses. Someone alert the historians.
Coupang is a South Korean e-commerce company backed by SoftBank that went public on the NYSE in 2021. The company operates in South Korea. South Korea apparently decided this was a problem. The House Judiciary Committee felt compelled to write a report about it. Retail traders who bought Coupang stock at $69 in March 2021 watched it drop to $13 by October 2022 and blamed everything except themselves. Now they have a new excuse.
The report does not specify which other U.S. companies got discriminated against. Could be anyone. Could be nobody. The vagueness is the point. U.S. politicians writing reports about foreign governments treating U.S. companies badly is like clockwork. It happens. Nothing changes. Everyone moves on.
South Korea discriminating against a company that employs tens of thousands of South Koreans and delivers packages to South Koreans seems counterproductive. But governments do counterproductive things constantly. This is not news. This is a Tuesday.
The House Judiciary Committee spent time and resources investigating whether South Korea was mean to Coupang. They concluded yes. The stock is up 4% over five years. The S&P 500 is up 87% over the same period. But sure, blame South Korea.
Some retail trader in Ohio is reading this report right now and nodding along, convinced this explains why his Coupang calls expired worthless. He will tell his friends. His friends will nod. None of them will look at a chart. None of them will ask why they bought stock in a company operating in a country that apparently hates it. They will just wait for the next House report to explain their next loss.
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