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South Korea, looking to avoid tariffs, agrees to U.S. trade deal

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is on the verge of securing his first major trade deal, leveraging the threat of tariffs to gain concessions from South Korea on exports of steel and imports of U.S. cars.

Ties between Washington and Seoul had become strained over disagreements about trade, including Trump’s steel tariffs, and threatened to further complicate the already fraught discussions with North Korea.

The finalization of a trade agreement with South Korea would hand Trump a victory in his “America First” approach to trade, in which he has threatened to take tough trade action unless other countries agree to concessions, including a reduction in the gap between what they export to the United States and what America exports to their shores.

The blanket steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the White House this month are the most recent example of that blunt approach, with the White House using exemptions and revisions as a carrot to avoid the tariff stick.

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“I think the strategy has worked, quite frankly,” Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, told Fox News in an interview on Sunday. “We announced the tariff. We said we were going to proceed. But, again, we said we’d simultaneously negotiate.”

The South Korean government announced the deal on Monday.

In a statement, the South Korean Trade Ministry said it had agreed to adhere to a quota of 2.68 million tons of steel exports to the United States a year, which it said was roughly equivalent to 70 percent of its annual average sent to the U.S. from 2015 to 2017. It also agreed to lower trade barriers to vehicles imported from the United States.

In return, the Trade Ministry said, South Korea would be exempt from the steel tariffs.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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ALAN RAPPEPORT and JIM TANKERSLEY © 2018 The New York Times

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