Since the launch last year of the Donald Trump administration, which championed "America First," the center of gravity of global supply chains has been shifting rapidly to the United States. As the United States offers benefits to corporations that establish production bases on its soil, Korean corporations, regardless of industry, are pledging to build plants and invest locally in the United States.
However, the U.S. push by Korean corporations brings complex challenges along with new opportunities. Policies differ by state, and corporations must resolve a range of issues—different systems and labor markets from Korea, network building, and more—to settle in stably. For corporations without sufficient experience and capital strength, entering the U.S. itself can be a major challenge.
In this process, a place global corporations turn to in order to reduce supply chain–building risks is the global real estate services corporation Cushman & Wakefield (hereafter Cushman). Cushman operates in 60 countries worldwide and provides comprehensive services across real estate, including sales, leasing, management, valuation, and advisory. Among these, the Americas logistics and industrial institutional sector is the core organization supporting multinational corporations' entry into the United States.
Jason Tolliver, head of the Americas logistics and industrial institutional sector, works with industrial institutional sector experts active in 10 countries and 240 offices across the Americas, including the United States, to advise multinational corporations on entering the U.S. market, support large-scale manufacturing investment projects, and help design and execute clients' supply chain networks. He visited Korea on the last month and held a seminar on U.S. industrial investment strategy for corporations. The following is a Q&A with Tolliver.
—What do you do, specifically?
"One of the key tasks is working closely with global corporations, including Korean corporations, to support them as they expand their business in the United States. We help corporations understand regional differences, assess supply chains and location strategies, and provide comprehensive support on the ground so projects are executed efficiently.
More broadly, we identify new trends in industrial demand—nearshoring, advanced manufacturing, infrastructure, and labor market changes—and help clients turn these insights into actionable strategies. Ultimately, my role sits at the intersection of real estate, supply chain strategy, and capital markets."
—How have manufacturers' supply chain strategies changed recently?
"Since the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain strategies have shifted from efficiency to resilience. In the past, cost savings were the focus through "just in time" production, which concentrated production in low-cost countries and minimized inventory. But this model proved vulnerable to unexpected events such as geopolitical tensions, production stoppages, and transport bottlenecks.
Today, corporations are redesigning production and logistics strategies around three principles: "regionalization," "building buffers," and "digitization and visibility." They are moving away from single-country–centered production to multiregion manufacturing, and dispersing risk through dual sourcing, expanding safety stock, and adding distribution nodes.
On the logistics real estate side, demand is rising rapidly for specialized industrial properties such as major logistics cities near plants, inland logistics hubs, and cold-chain or advanced manufacturing facilities. Now, corporations view the supply chain not as a simple expense-cutting tool but as a core strategy that determines corporate competitiveness."
—We hear the "local-for-local" strategy is being emphasized in the United States.
"This strategy, which sources raw materials and produces near the local market where products are sold, is fundamentally changing how global corporations allocate capital. It goes beyond simply relocating production facilities to reconfigure the entire supply chain value chain around the end market.
In industries such as autos, electronics, semiconductors, and consumer goods, global corporations are making large-scale investments in U.S. production facilities while also investing in adjacent supply chain networks. As first- and second-tier partners set up near major plants, localized supply chains are taking shape.
As a result, industrial clusters are forming in the U.S. Midwest and Southeast and along the U.S.-Mexico border. Demand is also growing for a range of industrial real estate, including not just factories but large logistics centers, cross-dock facilities, and last-mile logistics centers."
—How has the flow of Korean corporations' U.S. investment changed?
"In the past, Korean corporations took a market-entry–centered strategy. They set up sales subsidiaries in the United States to sell products made in Korea or Asian production bases and operated limited manufacturing and assembly facilities. The U.S. market remained in the downstream stages of manufacturing.
But recently the strategy has shifted to fully localizing production and supply chains. Large-scale investments are being made upstream in the supply chain—such as EV batteries, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing—and corporations are building the entire supply chain locally to qualify for subsidies, mitigate geopolitical risks, and secure access to core technology and customers.
Investment locations are diversifying across the United States, and co-investments or joint ventures with U.S. partners are also expanding. This means Korean corporations are evolving beyond simple export corporations to become members of the U.S. industrial ecosystem."
—What do Korean corporations worry about most when entering the U.S.?
"First, site selection and cost structure. Because the United States is not a single market but a market made up of different regional economies, corporations must comprehensively review workforce, wage levels, energy expense, infrastructure, and distances to customers and suppliers.
Securing labor is also a major task. Building a supply chain hinges on securing a skilled and stable workforce, and in regions where advanced manufacturing investment is concentrated, labor demand often outpaces supply. Beyond hiring, corporations must consider training and retaining local talent for the long term, as well as harmonizing with Korean management culture.
In addition, managing regulatory and policy frameworks across federal, state, and local governments and securing reliable local suppliers and logistics infrastructure are important tasks. The "expand local production" strategy is not completed by setting up a single plant; some corporations must bring key partners into the United States or build new partnerships."
—How does Cushman help Korean corporations?
"We recently supported a Korean advanced manufacturing corporation that was reviewing a large-scale investment project. The Global Korea Desk (GKD) team in Seoul worked closely with the client's executives to define key priorities such as proximity to customers, the ability to secure labor, and the project timeline. At the same time, the U.S. team conducted a multi-state site selection process that included labor market analysis, infrastructure evaluation, and incentive negotiations.
Projects like this proceed through cross-border collaboration between Seoul's GKD and the North America team. Rather than simply handing off work between offices, it is an integrated, two-way operating model that runs from initial strategy through on-the-ground execution. In particular, Seoul's GKD team works closely with clients to deeply understand the corporation's strategic goals, decision-making structure, and cultural context, setting the project's initial direction."