US President Donald Trump told Reuters on Thursday he would either renegotiate or terminate what he called a “horrible” free-trade deal with South Korea and said Seoul should pay for a US anti-missile system that he priced at $1 billion.
In an interview with Reuters, Trump called the five-year-old trade pact with South Korea “unacceptable” and said it would be targeted for renegotiation after his administration completes a revamp of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico.
He blamed the US-Korean trade deal, known as KORUS, on his 2016 Democratic presidential election opponent, Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state promoted the final version of the trade pact before its approval by Congress in 2011.
“It is unacceptable, it is a horrible deal made by Hillary,” the Republican Trump said. “It is a horrible deal, and we are going to renegotiate that deal or terminate it.”
Asked when he would announce his intention to renegotiate the deal, Trump said: “Very soon. I am announcing it now.”
Trump’s comments stunned South Korean financial markets, sending Seoul stocks and the won currency into reverse even as the country’s economic outlook has started to brighten.
With global demand improving, exports of goods such as cars and electronics have been leading a recovery in South Korea and a number of other trade-reliant Asian economies such as Japan and Taiwan, boosting their manufacturing sectors.
“Talk and actual policy are different,” a high-ranking official at South Korea’s Finance Ministry, who declined to be named, as he was not authorized to speak to the media, told Reuters.
“They (the Trump administration) have not requested anything from us so we will have to wait and see.”
KORUS was initially negotiated by the Republican administration of President George W. Bush in 2007, but that version was scrapped and renegotiated by President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration three years later.
The US goods trade deficit with South Korea has more than doubled since KORUS took effect in March 2012, from $13.2 billion in 2011 to $27.7 billion in 2016, according to US Census Bureau data.

Source: Arab News