By Yi Whan-woo
Concerns are growing here over a possible rift in South Korea’s decades-long alliance with the United States after Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, ratcheted up rhetoric on defense-cost sharing and the bilateral free trade deal (KORUS FTA), Friday.
Several analysts said Sunday that Seoul needs to ensure conservative Americans that it is not alone in benefiting from its security and economic relations with Washington.
They warned that the candidate’s idea of “America First” may linger on and continue to influence the white working class and others who oppose the Barack Obama administration even if Trump loses against Hillary Clinton in the November election.
“Trump’s speech should be seen as a warning about the security alliance between the two countries regardless of the U.S. presidential election result,” said Yang Uk, a senior research fellow at the Korea Defense and Security Forum in Seoul.
Shin In-kyun, the president of the Korea Defense Network, echoed Yang’s view.
“We should be prudent in our policy with the U.S. in the future, considering that the ideas of overhauling the defense-cost sharing pact and free-trade deal between Seoul and Washington are being talked about,” he said.
Citing that Trump told his supporters “I am your voice,” an economist said, “The low-income families, especially those who are white, apparently seem to have negative perspectives on U.S. trade with South Korea.”
A Twitter user named Han Kyung-soo tweeted that “Trump will keep those who settled with an alliance with Washington as well as those who were against the U.S. on their toes.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a researcher at the LG Economic Research Institute suggested that South Korean manufacturers in the U.S. should “step up efforts to boost the regional economy” where they run their plants.
Although Trump did not single out South Korea in his comments on defense during his Republican nomination speech in Cleveland, the billionaire tycoon said, “The countries that we are protecting at a massive cost to us will be asked to pay their fair share.”
He also called the KORUS FTA, “the job-killing trade deal with South Korea,” while disparaging Clinton for supporting the bilateral deal. The FTA took effect in February 2012 under the Barack Obama administration.
“I pledge to never sign any trade agreement that hurts our workers, or that diminishes our freedom and independence. We will never ever sign bad trade deals,” Trump said.
His rhetoric comes after he repeatedly accused South Korea of getting a “free ride” from the U.S to defend it from North Korea. He hinted at a withdrawal of U.S. forces unless Seoul increases defense payments “very substantially.”
Walid Phares, a top foreign policy adviser to Trump, said Trump wants to “go back to ground zero on the Korea-U.S. FTA.”
Leon Sigal, the director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council in New York, assessed that Trump’s “America First” policy should be understood as non-interventionism, not isolationism.
“Donald Trump understands something that Hillary Clinton, many Republicans and most of the American foreign policy establishment does not ― that a majority the American people are sick and tired of military interventionism and free trade deals that they blame for job losses,” he said in an email.