Trump calls new free trade deal with South Korea 'fantastic'
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet Meeting at the White House in Washington on Monday, October 21, 2019. UPI-Yonhap
U.S. President Donald Trump boasted of the revised free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea as a "fantastic deal," branding it as one of his administrations' key successes.
"We've done South Korea, which is a fantastic deal for us. It turned out even better than we thought," he said ahead of a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Monday, while referring to foreign trade deals the United States has clinched as he stressed that the U.S. economy was doing well.
Seoul and Washington revised their bilateral trade deal last year at the U.S. request, six years after the pact went into effect. Trump had slammed it as a bad deal that took away American jobs and widened the U.S. trade deficit with South Korea.
He took a swipe at the Obama administration again Monday for striking that "bad deal."
"South Korea was a terrible deal. The person in charge of that particular deal, Hillary Clinton, you've heard of her," Trump said. He added that South Korea is "getting much more involved with" the U.S. in terms of the economy and trade deal.
"A lot of money is being spent over there, and they are going to be doing it through us," Trump said. "They've been doing tremendous purchases. We had a tremendous deficit with them. And we're slowly eating away at these deficits." (Yonhap)