Moon, Trump Sign Revised FTA
27 September, 2018
President Moon Jae-in and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump on Monday put their signatures on a revised bilateral free trade agreement. The signing came on the sideline of the UN General Assembly in New York.
The two sides agreed on the revisions in late March after three rounds of talks since January.
The two leaders "hereby reaffirm our close alliance and the importance of maintaining strong, mutually beneficial trade and economic ties between our people," a joint statement said.
President Moon Jae-in (left) and U.S. President Donald Trump wave to reporters after signing a revised Korea-U.S. FTA in New York on Monday. /Yonhap
The U.S. will now keep a 25 percent tariff on Korean pickup trucks for another 20 years though that was supposed to be scrapped in 2021 in the original deal.
In return, Korea added an amendment to the investor-state dispute settlement that bans parallel legal cases from the same events being filed against the state, helping to prevent abuse of the international arbitration system by big multinationals.
In their summit, Moon asked Trump to scrap tariffs on Korean cars exported to the U.S. He said that Korea's trade surplus with the U.S. fell dramatically in 2017 while those of China, Germany, Japan and Mexico increased significantly and asked for an exemption from Section 232 of the U.S. Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
The section allows the U.S. president to impose tariffs or restrict the volume of imported goods if circumstances seem "to threaten or impair the national security."