Rep. Adrian Smith, Republican of Nebraska, was indignant. Fed up with the South Korean government’s pursuit of strict digital commerce laws, Smith used a January hearing to denounce the country for “aggressively targeting U.S. technology leaders.”
“One example would be Coupang,” added Smith, who chairs an influential House subcommittee.
The e-commerce company is not known to most Americans. Relatively few people in the United States use Coupang's site. It is best known not as a U.S. tech giant but as the “Amazon of Asia” — the largest online retailer in South Korea.
On the surface, a company with that profile — a foreign mega-retailer — might stand to face the wrath of a protectionist White House with America First economic policies. Yet for the last half-decade, Coupang has pursued an aggressive strategy to align itself with the United States, at times taking on the South Korean government and even complicating trade talks between Washington and Seoul.
The company moved its headquarters to Seattle in 2021, the same year as its splashy IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. In 2023, it hired a former top aide in the Trump White House, Rob Porter, to advise its American and global operations.
And now the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers are siding forcefully with Coupang and against the Korean government on matters of digital commerce.
“They seem to be successful in gaining traction with U.S. policymakers because, unlike other U.S. companies, they have a laser focus on one issue — digital discrimination — in one country — Korea," said Wendy Cutler, senior vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, and former acting deputy U.S. trade representative during the Obama administration.
A tentative agreement between the Trump administration and South Korean governments to lower tariffs on both sides, along with a $350 billion investment pledge from the South Korean government, is now at risk of unraveling over Seoul’s continued efforts to enact new restrictions on big tech platforms, among other issues. Coupang’s defenders in the U.S. are fanning the flames.
“This is what happens when you unfairly target American companies like Coupang,” House Judiciary Committee Republicans’ X account posted last month after Trump threatened on social media to raise tariffs on South Korea.
The president, himself, did not mention Coupang, instead accusing President Lee Jae-myung’s government of not living up to the agreement struck in July. A U.S. official with direct knowledge of White House negotiations denied that the Coupang investigation was a factor in Trump’s latest tariff threat.
"Longstanding issues that the U.S. has been trying to iron out with the Korean government over Coupang are unconnected with our trade deal, which addresses a completely different set of issues [such as] trade barriers and the trade deficit," said the official, who was granted anonymity to share sensitive details of closed-door negotiations.
Members of Congress, however, continue to make the connection.
On Wednesday, House Judiciary Committee Republicans subpoenaed Coupang as part of an investigation into South Korea’s digital policies and potential discrimination against U.S. companies.
“The targeting of Coupang and the potential prosecution of its American executives serve as a sharp escalation of South Korea’s campaign against innovative American-owned companies and directly conflicts with its recent commitment to avoid discriminatory treatment and the creation of unnecessary barriers for U.S. digital service providers,” Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust Chair Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.) wrote in a letter to Coupang Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel Harold Rogers.
Coupang promptly agreed to comply with the subpoena.
In response to questions about its lobbying efforts in the U.S. more generally, Coupang spokesperson Erika Reynoso said in a statement to POLITICO that the company is “grateful for partners across the Administration and Congress who are committed to ensuring fair market access for American goods from our sellers in all 50 states.”
Reynoso added: “Our singular focus has always been working to boost US exports by enabling thousands of American producers to sell their goods to tens of millions of new customers in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and 190 other markets around the world.”
Founded in 2010 by Kim Beom-seok, a Korean-born U.S. citizen and Harvard University grad, Coupang is now valued at about $37 billion, largely based on its dominant delivery service for goods and fresh food in Korea. Its American identity has been key to its appeal to U.S. policymakers, even before the data breach, as it looked to expand its reach and sale of U.S. goods in the South Korean market.
Coupang’s disclosure in November of its breach, potentially exposing the personal information of roughly 33 million South Korean users, has turbocharged those efforts. Coupang has framed the Korean government’s response as a "lawless whole-of-government attack” on an American company, implying it could be the first of many U.S. tech companies to face penalties if Seoul follows through on several digital laws now working their way through its legislature.
The White House has made those digital policies a focal point of its recent agreements with trading partners, including Korea. In November, Washington and Seoul formalized a tentative deal reached over the summer that lowered U.S. tariffs on Korean goods in exchange for a $350 billion investment commitment, among other South Korean pledges.
According to a fact sheet released by the Trump administration, Korea also committed to ensuring “that U.S. companies are not discriminated against and do not face unnecessary barriers in terms of laws and policies concerning digital services, including network usage fees and online platform regulations.”
But, top U.S. officials complain, Seoul is not living up to that or other parts of their agreement. They've "introduced new laws on digital services," U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a Jan. 27 interview on Fox Business Network. "They haven't done what they needed to do on agriculture and industry. And so it's hard to continue to hold up our end of the bargain, while they have not moved forward swiftly enough on their end."
Greer’s office also canceled an annual closed-door meeting with South Korean trade officials that had been scheduled for December in response to Seoul's pursuit of digital proposals that the Trump administration views as discriminatory, three people briefed on the plans said at the time.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative declined to comment.
The South Korean government denied a link, but the move also came just days after a contentious National Assembly hearing on Coupang’s data breach, where South Korean officials sharply criticized the absence of key witnesses.
The government also denies it is treating Coupang more harshly because it is based in the U.S.
“There is no way that American companies will be targeted unfairly, and there is no way that American companies will be discriminated against compared to domestic or other foreign companies,” South Korean Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo told POLITICO in an interview Jan. 14, during a trip to Washington to try and resolve U.S. concerns about his government’s digital policies. He was dispatched to Washington again last week to address Trump’s Jan. 27 post threatening to hike tariffs.
Yeo suggested his government’s response to the breach has been appropriate given the seriousness of the disclosures. “The scope of this data breach is not just names, addresses or mobile phone numbers, but also apartment entrance pass-key passwords. So this is directly related to the safety and privacy of every individual citizen.”
Coupang has sharply refuted those claims, saying the breach did not expose apartment access codes, since the company only provides delivery workers with codes to shared spaces, such as building gates. It added in a fact sheet that the “leak of low-grade” identification such as names, addresses and phone numbers “is not enough to create a material risk of harm. Indeed, that type of information is broadly in the public domain.”
However, Georgetown University law and technology professor Anupam Chander said the South Korean government’s response to the breach “strikes me as consistent with the level of public and governmental response in earlier debacles.”
As for Coupang’s claims that the South Korean government is attacking it because it is a foreign company, Chander said, “There’s something interesting in … trying to figure out whether Coupang is an American company or a Korean company.”
Coupang has spent the last several years establishing a footprint in the U.S. to claim the former. And it’s made a particular effort to woo MAGA-aligned officials. Its first lobbying hire, according to its government disclosures: Alex Wong, a former deputy assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs during the first Trump administration who served, before that, as foreign policy adviser and general counsel to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). In 2019, it added former Federal Reserve Board member Kevin Warsh, whom Trump just nominated to be the next Fed Chair, to its board of directors.
After first registering to lobby in 2021, Coupang’s lobbying spending surged to $3.3 million in 2024, more than double the previous two years, public records show. The same year, the company donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee — securing a seat for Kim, the company’s founder and chair, to attend last year’s swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol.
Coupang’s corporate PAC, formed in 2024, donated $100,000 to the Kennedy Center in June as part of a Trump effort to revamp the cultural center in his own image. It also contributed $198,978 to Democratic and Republican lawmakers and campaign committees in 2025 — including $15,000 to Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), the chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which handles trade issues in Congress.
“It's a full court press,” said one person who provided consultation services for the company, and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “They're very aggressive. They pursue every avenue through which they can influence the conversation in D.C.”
During the Biden administration, the company announced a “first of its kind” partnership with the International Trade Administration, an arm of the Commerce Department that promotes U.S. exports, aimed at supporting American businesses looking to enter the South Korean market.
After Trump was reelected in 2024, Coupang began shifting its investments on K Street. In January 2025, it dumped Putala Strategies, which had connections with former President Joe Biden, and brought on two new lobbying firms: Miller Strategies, which has staff with ties to Judiciary Committee Chair Jordan and former Vice President Mike Pence; and Continental Strategies, which has ties to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. They added a third group, Monumental Strategies, in June, and terminated their contract with another major Washington lobbying firm, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, in late January.
Those are in addition to Coupang’s three in-house lobbyists. In total, Coupang spent $2.27 million on lobbying in 2025.
It has also aligned itself with American tech industry lobby groups, joining the Computer & Communications Industry Association, and serving on the board of the National Foreign Trade Council — a pro-free trade group whose members include Walmart, Visa and Ford Motor Co. It’s also a member of the U.S.-Korea Business Council, an arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
And Coupang has benefited from the megaphone of much bigger tech players. Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of the software company Palantir and a longtime ally of Trump backer Peter Thiel, cheered litigation filed by Coupang’s American investors accusing the Korean government of mistreatment and asking USTR to open an investigation. In a Jan. 22 post on X, Lonsdale wrote that “S Korea’s government is making a huge mistake following in China’s footsteps and illegally harassing a US company.”
In the wake of Trump’s pledge to hike tariffs late last month, South Korean officials are now scrambling to salvage their trade agreement and keep their 15 percent tariff rate, in line with other regional trade competitors like Japan. Seoul has repeatedly dispatched senior economic officials to Washington while the country’s ruling party has pledged to speed up legislation to implement its pledged investment.
But Seoul shows no signs of backing off its investigation of Coupang. South Korean police on Friday questioned Rogers, Coupang’s general counsel, as part of the ongoing probe into the company’s data breach, which could expose the company to fines or additional enforcement measures, including on allegations he gave false testimony under oath, according to the Korean Yonhap News Agency.
A trade lawyer with close administration ties, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said companies should pay attention to how the federal government responds to South Korea’s treatment of the company.
“If the U.S. government shapes its response to a foreign government in part based on how a specific company with U.S. ties is treated, then failing to engage effectively in D.C. is going to become a new form of C-suite malpractice,” the lawyer said.
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