South Korea Hit with Highest Tariffs of FTA Nations
I think this is where the political crisis has really impacted South Korea, which is the inability to effectively negotiate tariffs with the Trump administration because you don’t know who will be President week-to-week:
Industry Minister Ahn Duk-geun, right, speaks at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Seoul, Thursday, during a meeting with businesspeople to discuss countermeasures against U.S. reciprocal tariffs. In the middle is Trade Minister Cheong In-kyo.
Korea has been hit with the highest reciprocal tariff rate among the 20 countries that have free trade agreements (FTAs) with the United States.
With it clear that Seoul had failed to persuade Washington to impose lower tariffs on Korean products compared to those from major exporters like Japan and the European Union, concerns are growing over Korea’s diplomatic approach and future trade negotiations with the U.S.
The White House announced on Wednesday (local time) that the U.S. will impose a 26 percent reciprocal tariff on Korea, while charging 24 percent on Japan and 20 percent on EU member states.
You can read more at the link.
South Korea getting by on the cheap for decades
Korea is one of many. I’m with Trump 100%. There may be some short-term economic harm but if we prevail it will level the playing field and benefit the United States in the long run.
ha ha. It had nothing to do with negotiations. You don’t negotiate with bullies and terrorists. It’s useless to do so, and when the mafia boss is only interested in tanking his economy so that he can feel powerful over the world. All those “negotiations” by all those countries with real presidents and governments, did jack sh&t. FTA means nothing to a maglomanical country that has constantly broken its contracts that it has signed with everybody.
How did the amateurish US government come up with this list? They used a simple formula, despite their effort to mask it, using Greek letters to make it look like it’s some kind of complex mathematical calculation (for all the dumb MAGAS, this is another brainwashing moment).
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/03/politics/video/trump-tariffs-math-calculation-phil-mattingly-digvid
So this is how they came up with their rate for Korea:
Korea’s Trade Surplus with US (Trade Deficit for the US)= $65 Billion
Korea’s Total Exports to US = $128 billion
65 Billion / 128 Billion = 50% Tarriff barrier rate X 0.5 US “Generosity” rate = 25% reciprocal tariff rate for Korea.
The formula works exact the same way for every other country.
That $65 billion Korean trade surplus with the US… out of that, about $40 billion of the supposed “surplus” are due to Korean companies making huge factory facilities investments into the USn – all paid for by Samsung, Hyundai, LG Chem, and all the thousands of mom and pop Korean parts factories representing a supply chain, that moved to the land of the Maggots. Not only the hard imports, Korea has sent hundreds of billions in financial capital to the US to invest in America, at the expense of the Korean Won, and this is the thanks you get. Maggot greed has no limits.
For instance, importing semiconductor machines, robots, high-tech machines, computers, chips, etc etc… all needed to set up new factories in the US – to give jobs to these worthless ingrate whining Maggots. All courtesy of Yoon. I called it last year, and it’s exactly the reason why the US is now using these distorted trade numbers for Korea/US trade, to slap high tariffs on Korea.
I said this was going to happen, and it’s exactly what happened. Yoon, Trump, Maggots…