Free Trade Situation defused for US meat industry
Photo: w.r. wagner
fleischwirtschaft.com — USA, Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump’s top trade adviser expressed optimism about reaching agreement on a revised free trade pact with South Korea, days after Trump suggested scrapping the deal with a key American ally. This was reported by Reuters.
Senior U.S. lawmakers and America’s biggest business lobby urged Trump not to pull out of the five-year-old U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), especially at a time of heightened tensions over North Korea’s nuclear missile tests.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, speaking in Mexico City after a second round of NAFTA talks with Canada and Mexico, said negotiations with Seoul were continuing. “We have a negotiation we’re in,” Lighthizer told reporters when asked whether KORUS would be terminated. “My hope is that we’ll have a successful discussion with the Koreans as things proceed and that the problems with that agreement from our perspective will be worked out.”
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, speaking in Mexico City after a second round of NAFTA talks with Canada and Mexico, said negotiations with Seoul were continuing. “We have a negotiation we’re in,” Lighthizer told reporters when asked whether KORUS would be terminated. “My hope is that we’ll have a successful discussion with the Koreans as things proceed and that the problems with that agreement from our perspective will be worked out.”
Trump said on Saturday he would discuss KORUS’s fate with advisers this week, prompting widespread concern among lawmakers and the business community. This deal also affect the Organizations representing agriculture interests e.g. the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA). In a separate letter to Trump, Senator Joni Ernest, a Republican from Iowa in the U.S. corn belt, said the South Korean market was especially important for U.S. beef, corn and pork producers.