Interview: S.Korea to face renegotiation on FTA with U.S.: expert

South Korea's next government is expected to face a re-negotiation on free trade pact with the United States as U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to increase jobs in his country, a large portion of which he believes had been lost through unfair trade deals, a South Korean expert said Thursday.

The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced an annual report on 2017 trade policy agenda for Trump, saying the free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea has dramatically increased the U.S. trade deficit in recent years.

The U.S.-South Korea FTA, which came into effect in 2012 during the Obama administration, reduced U.S. exports of goods to South Korea by 1.2 billion U.S. dollars, while raising U.S. imports from the South by 13 billion dollars in the past five years, according to the U.S. report.

The report said the U.S. trade deficit in goods with South Korea more than doubled in 2016 compared with 2011, stressing the need for "a major review" of how the U.S. approaches trade agreements.

"The trade report met with President Trump's comments made on his campaign trail. It indicates his willingness to fix it right on trade issues," James Kim, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, told Xinhua.

During the campaign, Trump denounced the bilateral trade pact with South Korea as a job-killing deal for workers of his country by increasing U.S. goods imports from the South and reducing U.S. exports to the ally.

The researcher, however, noted that the U.S. had enjoyed surpluses in services trade with South Korea though the former had suffered from deficits in overall trade.

Given the U.S. services surplus, Kim said, the possibility is low for the Trump administration to demand the repeal of the existing trade pact with South Korea. Rather, it is highly likely for the trade agreement to be re-negotiated between the two sides, he forecast.

Kim said the next South Korean government would face the U.S. demand for the re-negotiation when considering the political uncertainty here and the necessary time enough to sufficiently negotiate about what is required from each other.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye has been stripped of her executive power since the parliament passed the bill to impeach her on Dec. 9. The constitutional court is widely forecast to decide around March 13 on whether to permanently remove her from office or reinstate her.

If the court upholds the impeachment motion, a presidential election must be held within 60 days.

Even on an assumption that the impeached leader is reinstated, the next South Korean president will have to take charge of the renewed negotiations with the U.S. as it takes several years to complete a trade deal.

Kim said South Korea needs to prepare for the expected re-negotiations as details on the U.S. trade policy would be made clear under the new U.S. secretary of commerce Wilbur Ross who took office earlier this week.

He said the USTR trade report can be seen as just a first step to establish a new U.S. strategy on free trade as the report was written in the absence of Ross, the U.S. billionaire investor.

Seoul's trade ministry said in a press release that the 336-page USTR report mentions U.S. trade with South Korea just in six lines of one page, seeking to avoid too much significance put on it.

The research fellow advised the next South Korean leader should persuade Trump to believe that his country had also benefitted from the bilateral trade agreement or suggest that his country can create more jobs by the help of South Korea's direct investment in U.S. companies.

South Korea has invested more into U.S. industries than the U.S. has done to South Korean companies, according to the researcher.

The talking point will become whether South Korea can help the U.S. increase employment, which Trump has paid his most attention to, the researcher added. Enditem