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CNA
31-07-2025
- Business
- CNA
Praise Trump and speak simply: How the South Korean team negotiated its trade deal
SEOUL: The South Korean ministers tasked with negotiating a last-ditch trade deal with United States President Donald Trump said that to prepare, they role-played and solicited tips for engaging with the unpredictable leader. Among the advice they received? Call Trump a "great person" and speak as simply as possible, Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan told reporters in Washington after the deal was announced on Wednesday (Jul 30). The US will impose a 15 per cent tariff on imports from South Korea. The 15 per cent rate is below a 25 per cent tariff that Trump had threatened earlier and was equivalent to deals with Japan and the European Union. The stakes were particularly high for South Korea, a major export-driven economy, and Kim and other members of the delegation have only been on the job for a few weeks after President Lee Jae Myung won a snap election in June. Kim called Trump a "master of negotiations" and said each of the team, which included Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol and Minister for Trade Yeo Han-koo, took turns role-playing as the US president to prepare. "We tried to talk like President Trump, and President Trump's way of talking is very terse and straightforward," Kim said. "We prepared a lot of scenarios on our own on how to answer this or that question." Koo said the team only knew for sure they would be meeting Trump when they saw it on social media. The meeting itself went for about half an hour and the two sides went back and forth on the amount of the investment fund, which was eventually settled at US$350 billion, Koo said. "We collected a lot of negotiation strategies used by our counterparts in advance and thought a lot about how to respond, so the negotiation was very smooth," he said. Yeo quoted Trump as saying his personal involvement is rare in dealing with officials who are not heads of state, and means "he respects South Korea very much and attaches great importance to South Korea".
New York Times
24-07-2025
- Business
- New York Times
South Korea Jockeys for a Deal With Trump at Least as Good as Japan's
President Trump's trade agreement with Japan, announced this week, has intensified pressure on South Korea to cut a deal that doesn't leave it at a disadvantage relative to its biggest rival in East Asia. Kim Jung-Kwan, South Korea's industry minister, who arrived in Washington on Wednesday for negotiations, pledged an 'all-out effort' to strike a deal by the Aug. 1 deadline to stave off a 25 percent tariff that the White House threatened in April and again this month. Moving forward, Mr. Kim said he was taking a close look at the terms that Tokyo accepted. Mr. Trump agreed to a tariff rate of 15 percent. Japan vowed to buy more American cars and rice, as well as make more than $550 billion in investments at Mr. Trump's direction. The South Korean delegation will need to wait longer for clarity. A meeting planned for Friday with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, was canceled because of Mr. Bessent's schedule and had yet to be rescheduled. South Korea and Japan have similar powerhouse industries and trade relationships with the United States, and some of the sticking points are the same, including agriculture and automobiles. South Korea has limited negotiating levers, because it already committed to drop most of its tariffs to zero in a 2007 trade agreement. Mr. Trump signed a minor revision to that pact in 2018, lifting caps on how many American cars could be exported to South Korea. Nevertheless, the American trade deficit with South Korea has increased every year since then, reaching $66 billion in 2024. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
