00:00Yeah, let's actually delve into that with President Trump threatening those tariffs to 25 percent to South Korean goods.
00:07He says it's because the country's legislature has failed to codify the trade deal both nations reached last year.
00:14Let's bring in Troy Sangarone, non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology.
00:20Great to have you with us, especially given that these news just broke a few minutes ago.
00:25So given that President Trump has only not threatened South Korea, but also European countries, also Canada.
00:32I mean, does it make you feel that a trade truce with the United States is not necessarily a long term deal and that this could be a one off that could also pass?
00:42I do think this is something that could pass.
00:44We've seen with the case over Greenland and the tariffs on EU nations.
00:48We saw with Iran and the threat of any country that trade with Iran of a 25 percent tariff that those ultimately go into effect.
00:55I think what we're seeing here is President Trump would like to see the agreement with Korea move more quickly than it has, though we're only about three months since it was finalized.
01:05So it's perhaps understandable that we haven't gone further than we have so far.
01:08But I think this is something that will likely pass.
01:12The Korean prime minister was in Washington recently.
01:15He spoke with Vice President Vance about where things were.
01:18So things should be on a solid footing.
01:20I think in terms of longer term, though, there is this question of what will hold.
01:25In the case with Greenland recently, we saw USTR Jameson Greer say that in essence that countries need to compartmentalize things.
01:34And there might be issues where the U.S. will put a tariff on a country while the deal is still in place.
01:39So I think this is the challenge going forward is where will the U.S. expect countries to compartmentalize certain issues where it wants more and puts a tariff in place while the deal that they have already remains in place.
01:52We're hearing that the South Korean government didn't necessarily receive any official notice on these tariffs from the Trump administration.
01:59When it comes to the relationship between Washington and Seoul, how detrimental could this be?
02:05Remember, even during the negotiations on the trade deal, we have seen that immigration raid in Georgia causing a lot of uproar in South Korea.
02:15This is a relationship that I think we've seen some ups and downs with.
02:18You've had the downsides with the raid in Georgia.
02:20You have this potentially now.
02:22But there are upsides.
02:24The United States has referred to Korea as a model ally, one that it wants others to emulate.
02:28It's been happy with South Korean spending on defense.
02:32We've seen significant development with the U.S. allowing South Korea to develop nuclear subs.
02:38So I think there has been some back and forth in this relationship.
02:41But this was something that would be a serious issue in South Korea.
02:45If these tariffs go back up to 25 percent, that then starts impacting businesses and puts Korea at a disadvantage to Japan and the European Union.
02:52So this is an important issue.
02:54But I do think this is one that we can resolve.
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