hankyoreh

Paik Un-gyu

With the deadline for US President Donald Trump’s final decision about the US Commerce Department’s steel report (based on Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act) coming up in early April, there are calls for the 12 countries that would be subjected to a minimum 53% tariff by the second option in the report (the option that would hit South Korean businesses the hardest) to band together in opposition to this option.

“The 12 countries listed in the second option recommended by the US Commerce Department – including South Korea, Brazil, China, India, Russia and Vietnam – need to cooperate on their response,” said Song Gi-ho, an attorney specializing in trade and the chair of the trade committee for MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society, on Feb. 21. In Song’s analysis, it is short-sighted to see Trump’s trade dispute over steel as squeezing South Korea between the two superpowers of the US and China as they wage a trade war. Fundamentally, Song believes, this constitutes Trump’s direct challenge to the international trade order itself.

“The Commerce Department appears to have excluded Germany and Japan from the second option to take the wind out of the sails of a unified response by the international community. The international community is severely concerned about a series of measures reflecting protectionism and the ‘America First’ mentality,” Song said. He thinks the US intentionally left Japan, Germany, Canada and Taiwan off the list of 12 countries that would be facing massive tariffs as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy, to prevent the trade dispute from escalating into a conflict that would pit the US against the entire world.

South Korean Deputy Minister for Trade Kang Sung-chun provided the following explanation for South Korea’s response strategy: “Until President Trump makes his final decision, we will be actively lobbying the US to change its stance by explaining that we are participating in efforts to resolve the global oversupply of steel by reducing our steel production capability and that we are also reducing the volume of imports of Chinese steel.” That is, South Korea will be doing its best to prevent the adoption of the second recommended option, which is the worst of the three possibilities.

But experts insist that such outreach – visiting the US and attempting to win over stakeholders – should be accompanied by international cooperation in the form of a joint campaign for retributive tariffs against the US that could inflict genuine pain on the US.

“Rather than merely voicing their opposition to the US’s ‘America First’ stance, these 12 countries need to work together to take genuine retaliatory action that can force Trump to change his behavior,” Song said. During the G20 summit in July 2017, President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker already said he would immediately make a reprisal if the US activated Section 232.