US President Donald Trump has announced he is raising tariffs on South Korean imports to 25% after accusing Seoul of “not living up” to a trade deal reached last year.<\/p>\n
In a post on social media, Trump said he would increase levies on South Korea from 15% across a range of products including automobiles, lumber, pharmaceuticals and “all other Reciprocal TARIFFS”.<\/p>\n
Trump said South Korean lawmakers have been slow to approve the deal while “we have acted swiftly to reduce our TARIFFS in line with the Transaction agreed to”.<\/p>\n
South Korea says it had not been given official notice of the decision to raise tariffs on some of its goods, and wanted urgent talks with Washington over the issue.<\/p>\n
It added that South Korea’s Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan, who is currently in Canada, will visit Washington as soon as possible to meet US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.<\/p>\n
Shares in some South Korean exporters fell on Tuesday morning, with car maker Hyundai down about 2.5%. Stocks related to pharmaceuticals and timber were also lower.<\/p>\n
Seoul and Washington reached a deal last October, which included a pledge from South Korea to invest $350bn (\u00a3256bn) in the US, some of which would go to shipbuilding.<\/p>\n
The following month, the two countries agreed that the US would reduce tariffs on some products once South Korea started the process to approve the deal.<\/p>\n
The agreement was submitted to South Korea’s National Assembly on 26 November and is currently being reviewed. It is likely to be passed in February, according to local media.<\/p>\n
Tariffs are paid by companies who import products. In this case, US firms will pay a 25% tax on goods they buy from South Korea.<\/p>\n
Trump has frequently used tariffs as leverage to enact foreign policy during his second term in the White House.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, he threatened Canada with a 100% tariff if it struck a trade deal with China.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Chinese officials said its “strategic partnership” agreement with Canada is not meant to undercut other countries.<\/p>\n
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has said his country was not pursuing a free trade deal with China and has “never” considered it.<\/p>\n
He added that Canadian officials have made their position clear to their American counterparts.<\/p>\n
Before that, Trump said he would impose import taxes on eight countries – including the UK – who opposed US plans to seize Greenland, an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark which is a member of Nato.<\/p>\n
He later backed down from the tariff threat over Greenland citing progress towards a “future deal” over the island, but the episode strained US relations with Denmark and other Nato allies. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump has announced he is raising tariffs on South Korean imports to 25% after accusing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-435516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}