US President Donald Trump insisted that Seoul would stick to the terms of its recent tariff agreement, including hundreds of billions of US dollars of investment in the US, despite lobbying efforts by South Korean President Lee Jae-myung during their first in-person meeting.
Trump and Lee on Monday expressed optimism for close cooperation on North Korea, collective security and shipbuilding, yet the deal setting a 15 percent tariff on South Korean goods would remain unchanged, Trump said.
“We stuck to our guns,” he told reporters after the meeting. “They’re going to make the deal that they agreed to make.”
Photo: EPA
The summit was followed by news that Korean Air Lines Co plans to order more than 100 Boeing Co jets, as South Korean companies followed up with private-sector investment on top of US$350 billion of government-linked funding for the US set out in the deal.
The sit-down looked in danger of heading off the rails earlier on Monday after Trump posted on social media that political turmoil could make it impossible to deal with Seoul.
However, tensions were barely evident during the meeting and Trump praised his counterpart as a “very good representative for South Korea,” an indication that Lee and his team were able to defuse pre-summit tensions.
The South Korean leader launched a charm offensive, praising US stock-market gains, the gold finishes Trump added to the Oval Office and his peacekeeping efforts, and asked him to focus on ending tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
“We can do big progress with North Korea,” Trump said earlier in the Oval Office alongside Lee.
Trump said he would like to have another meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and that the two had become “very friendly” over the course of three meetings during his first term in office.
Trump also congratulated Lee on his election and said “we’re with you 100 percent,” despite the comments earlier on Monday that questioned political stability in South Korea and raised tensions with the decades-old ally.
Both leaders nodded to a burgeoning shipbuilding agreement, with Trump pledging to purchase ships from South Korea and Lee acknowledging Trump’s desire to have South Korean shipbuilding in the US employing American workers. The separate private-sector investment plans in the US are expected to reach about US$150 billion.
The exchange of pleasantries in the Oval Office nonetheless took place against the backdrop of lingering tensions over trade.
The two sides reached a last-minute trade deal at the end of last month that capped tariffs on US imports from South Korea, allowing Seoul to avoid the 25 percent rate that Trump had threatened to impose.
However, Trump administration officials had since signaled dissatisfaction over the terms and have been eager to pin down South Korea on the specifics of the US$350 billion it pledged to invest in the US as part of the deal.
For Seoul, the deal meant South Korean vehicles and auto parts facing the same tariff level as Japan, putting it in less of an advantageous position compared with its regional rival than before Trump’s trade war. It also left the nation vulnerable to later tariffs on chips and batteries, other key sectors for the economy and future growth.
Still, there was no expectation ahead of the meeting that Lee intended to change the details of the deal. On the contrary, South Korean officials were more concerned that the US president might want to reopen talks on a domestic agriculture sector that was largely ring-fenced by Seoul in the trade talks.
Monday’s meeting was also expected to have touched on other thorny issues, including reaching an agreement on defense cooperation, which Seoul initially tried to make part of the tariff deal.
After the meeting with Trump, Lee said South Korea would increase its defense spending. He said that the additional budget would go toward acquiring advanced assets for future warfare, but did not specify by how much it would be raised.
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