Search Results for: cost sharing trump

The long negotiated USFK Cost Sharing Agreement has been implemented:

South Korea will spend nearly $125 million more this year to station American troops on the peninsula, according to a new cost-sharing deal that took effect Wednesday.

The Special Measures Agreement between South Korea and the United States determines the cost split for keeping roughly 28,500 U.S. troops in the country and employing South Korean civilians on U.S. military bases.

Seoul is expected to contribute $1.02 billion for 2021, a 13.9% increase to the $896.62 million it spent the previous year. The renewed agreement will retroactively apply to South Korea’s contribution from last year, which was carried over from 2019 after negotiations for the agreement’s renewal became deadlocked during President Donald Trump’s administration.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

This is essentially the deal the ROK always wanted to sign with the US, but the Trump administration would not agree to:

South Korea will increase the amount if pays to support U.S. troops on the peninsula by 13.9%, the country’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday following agreement on a six-year cost-sharing deal.

South Korea will pay $1.03 billion this year, up from $910 million in 2019, to support 28,500 U.S. service members there, according to a ministry statement.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but I always said this would be an easy win for the Biden administration especially when it is a deal the ROK always wanted.

Like I said before signing a new cost sharing deal would be a simple win for the Biden administration. The reported 13% rise allows the administration to say they were able to get the ROK to pay more when the Trump administration with their hardline tactics could not:

The United States and South Korea are just weeks away from coming together on a new cost-sharing deal for stationing 28,500 U.S. troops on the peninsula, CNN reported Wednesday.

The report, which cited five anonymous sources familiar with the discussions, said the contract taking shape is a multiyear deal that increases Seoul’s contribution by about 13%.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The Biden administration has vowed to strengthen alliances with America’s allies and one way to do that with South Korea is quickly sign a cost sharing agreement:

The election of U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden would mean a stronger alliance with South Korea and other allies, but tensions with North Korea could escalate because Pyongyang could try to test his administration, experts said Saturday.

“I think if Biden is elected, most American allies, including South Korea, will breathe a sigh of relief. He is likely to work much harder to strengthen our alliances,” said Gregg Brazinsky, professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University.

One of Biden’s key foreign policy advisers, Brian McKeon, said the Democratic candidate would immediately seek to repair the country’s alliances and reaffirm the United States’ commitment to improving its relations with its allies.

“(Biden) frequently says when he takes office, he will immediately get on the phone with some of our key allies in Europe and Asia, and centrally say, ‘America is back, and we have your back’,” McKeon said in a recent interview with Yonhap News Agency.  (………..)

Brazinsky noted a Biden administration would likely treat U.S. allies with more respect.

“The U.S. will have severe economic difficulties due to the (COVID-19) pandemic, and it is possible that even under Biden, the U.S. will need South Korea to share more of the costs of maintaining American troops,” he told Yonhap.

“But I think if this is the case, Biden will attempt to negotiate this change in a manner that treats South Korea with the appropriate respect,” he added. (………………)

Harry Kazianis, senior director of Korean studies at the Washington-based Institute for the National Interest, said that Biden would likely seek to quickly conclude the negotiations and at a much lower rate of increase.

“I would argue that a Biden Administration would quickly sign a new SMA with Seoul within the first 100 days of taking office, as Biden will not want to drag on talks any longer and likely ask for a 3-5 percent increase per year for a multiyear period,” he said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I think Seoul would be willing to give the Biden administration a small increase because it would allow Biden to say he got the ROK to pay more when Trump could not.

Of all the excerpts given to the media there is hardly anything new he is disclosing because it has been widely reported President Trump has threatened to pull out USFK if South Korea does pay more for US-ROK cost sharing:

 U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to pull American troops from South Korea if Seoul did not pay US$5 billion under a defense cost-sharing deal, his former National Security Adviser John Bolton said in his memoir.

In “The Room Where It Happened,” set to be published Tuesday, Bolton recalled an Afghanistan-related meeting that took place last August ahead of the start of Special Measures Agreement negotiations between South Korea and the United States.

“Get out of there if we don’t get the five billion-dollar deal (for South Korean support of U.S. bases),” Trump was quoted as saying. “We lose $38 billion in trade in Korea. Let’s get out.”

Trump’s initial demand for $5 billion has been widely reported as the two countries remain deadlocked over how much Seoul should pay for the upkeep of 28,500 American troops stationed on the peninsula.

Yonhap

Here is something new that hasn’t been heard before, that President Trump allegedly call Kim Jong-un a “psycho”:

At the meeting, Trump also called the “war games” with South Korea a “big mistake,” referring to the allies’ combined military exercises.

“You shouldn’t have let them go on,” Bolton quoted Trump as telling him. “I’m trying to make peace with a psycho,” he added of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on the USFK cost sharing issue:

US President Donald Trump told a press briefing Thursday that South Korea had agreed to pay “substantial money” to the US for the upkeep of the 28,500 American troops stationed here, repeating what he had told Reuters a week earlier. 

“It costs us a lot of money. And if we’re going to defend countries, they should also respect us by making a contribution,” Trump said.

The Trump administration is reportedly pushing Korea to pay about $1.3 billion, a whopping 49 percent more than Korea paid last year and roughly four times the amount that Seoul and Washington shook hands on for an interim deal last March.

Trump openly rejected the deal and has since pressed Korea to shoulder a greater share of the defense costs.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

According to Ambassador Harris timing is running out for a US-ROK cost sharing deal:

Washington has compromised in its demands that South Korea should pay billions of dollars towards US troop presence and it was Seoul’s turn to reciprocate before time ran out, the American ambassador said Thursday.

The two allies are in a security alliance and Washington stations 28,500 troops in South Korea to defend it from the nuclear-armed North, which invaded in 1950.

They are a key part of US forces’ deployment in Asia, but the Trump administration has been insisting Seoul pay more towards their costs.

The initial US demand was around $5 billion a year — a more than fivefold increase on the roughly $900 million paid in 2019 — provoking consternation in Seoul.

The latest round of negotiations concluded without an agreement in Washington on Wednesday.

US negotiators had “adjusted our position, our top line number”, said Ambassador Harry Harris. “We are now waiting for the Korean side to do the same.”

“South Korea as an equal partner in the preservation of peace on the peninsula, and its position as the 12th largest economy in the entire world, can and should do more.”

Time was “of the essence”, he told reporters in a group interview at his residence in the centre of Seoul.

Around 10,000 South Koreans working for United States Forces Korea (USFK) are paid from funds from last year’s deal and when they run out, they will have to be put on furlough, he said. “That notice is going to go out soon.”

AFP

You can read more at the link.

This is really nothing new on the U.S. President’s part; he has been very consistent on South Korea paying more for the upkeep of the US-ROK alliance. The only question at this point is how much is the increase going to be?:

U.S. President Donald Trump has publicly increased pressure on South Korea to pay more for the upkeep of 28,500 United States Forces Korea (USFK), ahead of the next round of negotiations for the ongoing defense cost-sharing talks scheduled to be held in Washington, D.C., Tuesday and Wednesday. 

The 11th Special Measures Agreement (SMA) ― as the talks are called ― between Washington and Seoul began in September last year for this year’s defense cost-sharing, but its year-end deadline has passed with the countries failing to narrow their differences. 

“These rich countries have to pay for it. South Korea gave us $500 million,” Trump said during an interview with Fox News, Friday (local time). “They’re a wealthy country. They build all your television sets, they took that away from us, they build ships, they build a lot of things. I said we’re protecting and you’ve got to pay. They paid us $500 million; they’re going to pay us a lot more.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

There is a new book out and of course to create traction in the media with it the author has to claim that President Trump is an idiot:

During that conversation, Wead wrote, Trump reiterated his belief that Obama would have gone to war with the North had he stayed in office.

“And I also think that thirty to one hundred million people could have been killed,” Wead quoted the president as saying.

South Korea has 51.2 million people and North Korea has a population of 25 million.

Trump then expressed disbelief at experts’ predictions that 100,000-200,000 people would die, a number he said was the equivalent of the population of a South Korean village.

“Well, as you know, Seoul, the capital city, is right by the so-called border,” he continued, according to Wead. “And that is a tough border by the way. An impenetrable border. And Seoul has a population of thirty million people. Kim has ten thousand guns, artillery, they call them cannons. He doesn’t even need a nuclear weapon to create one of the greatest calamities in history.”

The population of Seoul is just under 10 million.

Yonhap

When I read Trump’s comments I clearly understood that when he was talking about Seoul he was referencing the Seoul metropolitan area. The Seoul city center has 10 million, but the metro area has 25 million. Also when he is talking about upwards of 100 million casualties how do we know he wasn’t including if a nuclear weapon was dropped on Tokyo or other major cities? It is context like this that is important, but to get media attention he must be described as an idiot, so mission accomplished by this author.

The only real idiots are whoever told him a war on the Korean peninsula would only lead to 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. If they did not use nukes I could maybe understand that number, but I find it hard to believe that if North Korea went all in and used nuclear weapons, that only that many people would die.

A quote I did find interesting that may explain why President Trump is pushing so hard on the Moon administration on USFK cost sharing is the status of the THAAD battery in South Korea:

“Do you know how much we spend defending South Korea? Four and half billion dollars a year. Figure that one out?” he added.

Trump has reportedly demanded that South Korea raise its contribution to shared defense costs to US$5 billion next year, a five-fold increase from this year.

Trump also complained to Wead that the people who treated the U.S. the worst were its allies.

“And you’ve heard the story with South Korea with the missiles system, with the THAAD anti-missile system?” he was quoted as saying.

I read that to mean that he is not happy about how the Moon administration is allowing the blockade of the road to the THAAD battery to occur. ROK Heads may remember that the road is still blocked and all supplies and personnel to the battery have to be flown in by helicopter. The battery though there to protect South Koreans is frequently used by Moon’s leftist allies to promote wild conspiracy theories and anti-Americanism.

Trump we have seen has a long memory when it comes to things he does not like and maybe the THAAD issue is something he is still unhappy about and influencing the cost sharing talks?

I wonder if the U.S. negotiators have learned a few techniques from the North Koreans to pressure the ROK on the cost sharing issue. Storming out of negotiations as the media is describing it comes off as very North Korean like and not a good look for U.S. negotiators in my opinion:

 Defense cost-sharing talks between South Korea and the United States were abruptly cut short Tuesday as the U.S. negotiators walked out of the meeting and accused Seoul of making proposals falling short of “fair and equitable burden sharing.”

The unexpected ending underlined wide differences between the two sides after Washington’s reported demand for a fivefold increase in Seoul’s sharing of the cost of the upkeep of about 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea.

The latest round of negotiations, which began Monday, was supposed to last through Tuesday. But Tuesday’s second day of talks ended in about an hour as the U.S. negotiators left the meeting, South Korean officials said.

“Unfortunately, the proposals that were put forward by the Korean team were not responsive to our request for fair and equitable burden sharing,” James DeHart of the U.S. State Department told local media shortly after the talks ended.

“As a result, we cut short our participation in the talks today in order to give the Korean side some time to reconsider and, I hope, to put forward new proposals that would enable both sides to work towards a mutually acceptable agreement,” he said. “We look forward to resuming our negotiations when the Korean side is ready to work on the basis of partnership on the basis of mutual trust.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but it appears what is going on is that the ROK is refusing to include payment for the deployment of strategic assets to the ROK like aircraft carriers, submarines, etc. that support exercises as well as show of forces against North Korea.

The Moon administration is probably liking this because politically it will help them in upcoming parliamentary elections early next year if they are perceived to be standing up to the Trump administration who is trying to fleece the hard working Korean taxpayer. This is good politics for them and likely why there will be no movement on this issue unless the U.S. side gives up the big increase in ROK contributions.