US Moving Forward With Request for KORUS Bilateral Committee Meeting to Amend Deal

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, at the direction of President Donald Trump, is calling for a U.S.-South Korea joint committee meeting under U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement Article 22.2 to start renegotiating and amending the agreement, a Trump administration official said in an email. The joint committee under KORUS comprises the U.S. trade representative and South Korea’s minister of trade, or their designees, and meets yearly, unless the parties decide otherwise, or within 30 days upon either party’s request. “USTR will request a meeting,” the official said. “Once a formal request is sent, the date(s) and arrangements of the Joint Committee will then be determined and announced.”

KORUS Article 22.2 allows the joint committee to engage in broad discussions about the agreement, including possible amendments, and any committee decisions must follow consensus. Joint committee responsibilities include considering ways to improve trade relations, seeking to resolve “interpretation and application” disputes, and supervising KORUS implementation, the official said.

A South Korean daily newspaper, The Hankyoreh, reported that no official bilateral discussions on the trade agreement have taken place on “working-level channels” since Trump hosted South Korean President Moon Jae-in for a meeting last week (here). “For now I can’t offer a definitive answer about when, where, or what form this consultation group will take,” the article cited a South Korean official as saying. A senior official from South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy told the newspaper that the recent talk of KORUS renegotiations contradict the views of working-level officials in USTR and the U.S. Commerce Department. U.S. officials have told South Korean counterparts that the U.S. would take a “market approach” to improving the deal, including the resolution of factors behind the U.S. trade deficit with South Korea, the article quoted the official as saying. The South Korean Embassy in Washington didn’t comment.