WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump\u2019s nominee to be the US ambassador to South Korea vowed on Wednesday to press South Korea to learn where the $350 billion Seoul has pledged to invest in the United States will come from.<\/p>\n
Former California congresswoman Michelle Steel also told her Senate confirmation hearing that US firms in South Korea deserved the same market access Korean companies enjoy in the United States.<\/p>\n
Last year Washington and Seoul agreed the broad outlines \u200cof an agreement \u200con trade and investment under which South Korea committed \u200bto \u200cinvest $350 \u2060billion \u200bin the \u2060United States in return for more favorable tariff terms. But details have been sparse and implementation slow, prompting Trump to threaten in January to raise tariffs on South Korean goods to 25 percent from the 15 percent noted in the deal.<\/p>\n
Tensions have since eased, and a South Korean law implementing the investment pledge goes into force next month. Steel, however, said Washington was still waiting for key details.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going \u2060to sit down with the Korean government and whoever that \u200cis (in) control of these trade issues, \u200cbecause that joint fact sheet is not really clear \u200babout that $350 billion,\u201d Steel said in response \u200cto a question from Republican Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I want \u200cto see exactly where that\u2019s coming from,\u201d Steel said, adding that South Korea currently had a trade surplus with the United States of $50 billion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always think that free trade is always win-win, and we can renegotiate,\u201d Steel said, adding that she would \u201clove \u200cto see … how we\u2019re going to actually export more to South Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ricketts said the US Trade Representative\u2019s \u2060March National Trade Estimate \u2060Report highlighted a broad range of South Korean barriers that continued to stifle American agricultural and digital services, despite Seoul\u2019s pledge to eliminate them.<\/p>\n
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, senior Democrat on the Republican-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said there had been no transparency about how $350 billion would be spent and the Trump administration had also not been transparent about a deal with Japan.<\/p>\n
She asked Steel if she would commit to sharing information with the committee about where the money would come from and go to and the nominee replied: \u201cYes, I do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ambassador\u2019s post has been vacant throughout Trump\u2019s second term, despite South Korea\u2019s \u200bstatus as a key ally. \u200bIt requires Senate approval.<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump\u2019s nominee to be the US ambassador to South Korea vowed on Wednesday to press South Korea to learn where the $350 billion Seoul has pledged to invest in the United States will come from. Former California congresswoman Michelle Steel also told her Senate confirmation hearing that US firms in South Korea …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":98073,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98074,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98057\/revisions\/98074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}