U.S. President Donald Trump has again made aggressive tariff threats to a long-standing ally with strong economic ties to the United States. This time, he announced on social media that he would raise tariffs on a wide range of South Korean products to 25 percent—up from the 15 percent tariffs currently imposed under the administration’s novel use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The president’s justification, this time, was that the South Korean National Assembly has not yet ratified the framework the two governments announced last summer.
That Seoul will likely move quickly to pass implementing legislation misses the point. This episode is simply the latest illustration of the uncertainty-driven, ad hoc trade policy that has defined the Trump administration. This episode comes on the heels of the administration’s raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia last fall, where federal agents detained hundreds of South Korean employees who were in the country to help build an electric vehicle battery plant co-owned by Hyundai and LG—the kind of investment the administration claims it wants. Is it any wonder U.S. allies are learning that America’s trade commitments are temporary, reversible, and unsafe to rely on—and increasingly looking elsewhere as a backup policy?
U.S. President Donald Trump has again made aggressive tariff threats to a long-standing ally with strong economic ties to the United States. This time, he announced on social media that he would raise tariffs on a wide range of South Korean products to 25 percent—up from the 15 percent tariffs currently imposed under the administration’s novel use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The president’s justification, this time, was that the South Korean National Assembly has not yet ratified the framework the two governments announced last summer.
That Seoul will likely move quickly to pass implementing legislation misses the point. This episode is simply the latest illustration of the uncertainty-driven, ad hoc trade policy that has defined the Trump administration. This episode comes on the heels of the administration’s raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia last fall, where federal agents detained hundreds of South Korean employees who were in the country to help build an electric vehicle battery plant co-owned by Hyundai and LG—the kind of investment the administration claims it wants. Is it any wonder U.S. allies are learning that America’s trade commitments are temporary, reversible, and unsafe to rely on—and increasingly looking elsewhere as a backup policy?
Lost among Trump’s bluster is a simple fact: The United States and South Korea already have a comprehensive, legally binding free trade agreement. This apparently means very little to the administration—a lesson Seoul is absorbing quickly. The Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) was signed in 2007 and entered into force in March 2012.
The legislation passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan majorities. It is the law of the land. Under KORUS, about 95 percent of South Korean consumer and industrial goods enter the United States duty-free or at minimal tariff rates.
The administration’s imposition of 15 percent IEEPA tariffs effectively nullified these congressional commitments. By declaring a bogus economic “emergency,” the White House imposed sweeping tariffs on an ally with which the United States has enjoyed a largely duty-free trading relationship for more than a decade. KORUS has been a success. The “deal” now awaiting action in Seoul is not a replacement for KORUS. It is unilateral protection layered on top of existing U.S. law.
The president’s impatience with South Korea’s legislative and political processes is especially rich given America’s own history with the KORUS agreement. KORUS was negotiated and signed by the Bush administration in June 2007. It did not enter into force until spring 2012—nearly five years later.
The agreement languished for years amid concerns on the U.S. side over automobiles and beef. Only after the Obama administration renegotiated portions of the deal in 2010—largely to placate the auto industry and the United Auto Workers—did Congress finally act. The legislation was signed in October 2011.
In other words, the United States took almost five years to ratify KORUS after it was signed, requiring a renegotiation along the way. And yet South Korea’s National Assembly is expected to rubber-stamp Trump’s IEEPA deal—which was announced via press release just a few months ago—immediately. The double standard is obvious.
The administration’s treatment of South Korea—tariff threats, then the Hyundai raid, and now more tariff threats—is part of a pattern that is actively pushing American allies toward China. This dynamic is visible with Japan, Canada, and India, for example.
One story is particularly illustrative of this trend: The September raid on the Hyundai plant in Georgia was the largest single-site enforcement operation in Homeland Security history, and was carried out in coordination with other federal law enforcement agencies and Georgia’s State Patrol. Federal agents detained 475 workers, including more than 300 South Koreans who were there to install specialized equipment and train American workers—skills that, as Hyundai’s CEO noted, simply don’t exist in sufficient numbers in the United States. The detained workers were shackled and held for a week before being flown home. Nearly 200 are reportedly preparing to sue U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for racial profiling, human rights violations, and unlawful arrest. Many had their B-1 business visas reinstated afterward, a certain albeit quiet admission that they were lawfully present all along.
The raid caused a diplomatic crisis and delayed the plant’s opening by months. It sent a clear message to South Korean companies: Your investments in America are not safe, and your workers may be treated like criminals.
Nor is this the first time the Trump administration has strong-armed Seoul on trade issues. During his first term, he threatened to withdraw from KORUS entirely, calling it a “horrible deal” and a “Hillary Clinton disaster.” Under that pressure, Seoul agreed to renegotiate. Those minor revisions took effect in 2019. Taking a victory lap at the time, the president hailed the modified agreement as a “great deal for American and Korean workers.”
Around the same time, the Trump administration imposed aggressive “national security” tariffs on steel products from virtually every country in the world, including South Korea. To avoid the tariffs, Seoul negotiated a quota of just 70 percent of its steel export volume—a restriction still in place today.
Those changes were implemented in 2019 without a vote in Congress. So, when it was convenient, the Trump administration was happy to bypass Congress. Now the president demands that another country’s legislature act with dispatch on his latest ultimatum. All while Seoul’s trust in Washington further erodes.
This episode exposes the fundamental duplicity of the Trump administration’s approach to trade policy. The “deals” the administration has announced with South Korea, the European Union, and others are not real trade agreements.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, the administration has struck more than a dozen of these arrangements. “Nearly all aren’t legally binding,” it observed. “Most are a page or two long.” These agreements exist solely at the executive level, with no input from Congress. Abroad, implementation often requires legislation and statutory changes. Complicating matters further, the president is deeply untrusted abroad, making codifying agreements politically costly for foreign lawmakers.
Undergirding the trade turmoil between the United States and Korea is that the Trump administration can snap its fingers and impose tariffs unilaterally, using sweeping powers it has claimed under the IEEPA that presumably Congress never intended to grant. Meanwhile, our trading partners operate under constitutional systems where legislatures have real power over fiscal and trade policy.
That problem might arise from the fact that these IEEPA tariffs’ legal foundation is shaky at best. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the legality of these tariffs in November, with justices expressing skepticism that Congress could—or even had—delegated such broad tariff authority to the president. A decision is expected soon, which could invalidate the entire framework.
For years, successive administrations and large, bipartisan swaths of Congress have raised some legitimate concerns about China’s trade and investment practices, including state-directed technology acquisition through foreign investment restrictions and cyber-hacking. Yet instead of cultivating stronger economic ties with allied countries that share American concerns with Beijing’s policies, the Trump administration has embraced a deliberate policy of antagonizing those very allies, South Korea perhaps chief among them. In doing so, the United States is teaching them that U.S. trade agreements are unreliable—and that they should seek alternatives. The strategic implications of this pattern are severe.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung recently said he wants a “full-scale restoration” of ties with China. Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a new “strategic partnership” with Beijing, which, among other provisions, slashed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, which Washington policymakers argue is a serious national security concern. Hoping to strengthen bilateral economic ties, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer (along with a number of business leaders) traveled to Beijing last month for the first visit by a U.K. leader in eight years.
America’s allies aren’t suddenly enamored with Beijing. They’re hedging because the United States has become an unreliable partner that treats allies like adversaries. As one analyst told the Wall Street Journal, “It’s not that China becomes more attractive, but it becomes more necessary.”
We are witnessing the arbitrary exercise of American economic coercion against an important economic partner located in a vital part of the world. Korean companies have invested billions in American advanced manufacturing—precisely the type of investment the Trump administration seeks to obtain through its tariff policies and trade negotiations.
Perhaps most jarring is that Seoul isn’t receiving any guidance on American trade aims through regular diplomatic channels but via Truth Social. This is not how serious countries conduct trade policy—or how allies treat one another. And yet the administration treats Seoul with casual contempt.
The deeper problem is Congress’ abdication of its constitutional role. The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, but it has allowed the executive branch to claim sweeping unilateral authorities.
The IEEPA was never intended to authorize the unilateral rewriting of the U.S. tariff code or the nullification of congressionally approved and codified trade agreements. The Supreme Court may strike down these tariffs. But regardless of how the justices rule, Congress needs to reclaim at least some of its authority.
South Korea’s National Assembly will likely pass implementing legislation in short order. But the deeper dysfunction—erratic and arbitrary, unilateral trade policy—will remain as long as Trump is in office. In the absence of congressional action, America’s international economic policy will be conducted by social media posts, subject to reversal at the president’s mercurial whim. And this will have the effect of stunting economic growth, raising prices for American consumers, and corroding important economic ties with important trading partners.
Every broken commitment, every tariff threat announced via social media, teaches important economic partners that American trade agreements are not worth the paper they’re printed on. And they are learning fast.
