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Troy Stangarone

Troy Stangarone (ts@keia.org) is the senior director of congressional affairs and trade at the Korea Economic Institute.

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Troy Stangarone

Complexity of Inflation Reduction Act

By Troy StangaroneThe Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has complicated U.S.-Korea relations and spurred accusations by one senior Korean official that the new electric vehicle (EV) requirements are a “betrayal.” However, the IRA is also a complex piece of legislation designed significantly to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and reshape supply chains for critical minerals. The IRA is the most important piece of climate change legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress. Its climate provisions are expected to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions between 37 percent and 41 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. As the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the act is an important step by the United States to meeting its contributions to helping the world reduce emissions enough by 2050 to prevent global average temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius ― the point beyond which scientists believe the world will reach a series of “tipping points” that would begin reshaping the environment.Ideally, the IRA would have blended the United States

Sep 15, 2022By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

A more complicated Korea-China relationship

By Troy StangaroneLater this month, South Korea and China will mark the 30th anniversary of formal relations. Normally this would be a time for diplomatic pleasantries, but the anniversary comes at a complex time for the relationship.When the two countries first established diplomatic relations 30 years ago, the Cold War had just ended. While China remained politically a one-party communist state, capitalism and liberal democracy were seen as ascendant and the United States was the world's undisputed superpower.These shifts paved the way for the rapid development of economic ties between South Korea and China. In 1992, total trade between the two countries was only $6.3 billion. Trade would grow so rapidly that by 2003 China would displace the United States as South Korea's largest trading partner. Last year,total trade stood at $301.5 billion.But the world has changed over the last three decades. China has become the world's second-largest economy, while the United States has faced relative decline. China's economic growth has also come with an understandable desire to play a larger

Aug 18, 2022By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

Economic security and resiliency

By Troy StangaroneEarlier this month, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the electricity for most of the state of Texas, requested customers voluntarily reduce power consumption to avoid rolling blackouts due to an extreme heat wave. Ordinarily, the ability of Texas to maintain power through extreme weather would not be an issue for the alliance. However, with Samsung set to build a second semiconductor facility in Texas, its ability to handle extreme weather is an issue for the alliance. After the supply chain shortages of the last few years the United States and Korea have increasingly focused on issues of economic security and developing secure supply chains. Samsung's commitment to build a second semiconductor facility in the United States is part of that effort. It takes years to build and bring online a new semiconductor facility, meaning Samsung's investment will not address the short-term challenges in the semiconductor supply chain. However, over the medium-term the facility would address three concerns within the alliance. The first is resiliency in th

Jul 21, 2022By Troy Stangarone
Economic security and resiliency
Troy Stangarone

What to do about Russian fossil fuel imports?

By Troy StangaroneIn recent weeks, Gazprom has cut the flow of gas into Europe along the Nord Stream 1 pipeline by 60 percent, while also cutting off some of the countries that refused Russia's demand to pay in rubles. Along with Europe's own efforts to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels, this has placed pressure on EU countries to find alternative energy sources before the situation becomes more critical in winter. Russia's actions also have implications for Korea's energy policy. Since the war began, prices of LNG, coal, and petroleum have all increased driving inflation higher. There is also the issue of how Korea will handle its own imports of Russian energy.So far, there has been no formal request from the United States or Europe for Korea to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels. Even if there is no formal request, Russia's decision to weaponize its energy exports raises the question of whether it is prudent in the long term to continue to import fossil fuels from Russia.While Russia is only Korea's fourth-largest source of fossil fuels, it is not an insignificant one. Last ye

Jun 21, 2022By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

Economic security needs to work both ways

By Troy StangaroneIn the lead up to Joe Biden's recent trip to South Korea, Washington and Seoul agreed to establish a dialogue channel on economic security. For much of the last few years, the United States has largely focused on how to improve its own economic security. But for the new initiative to succeed it will need to work both ways.Economic security is a concept that stresses that economic issues are also national security issues. Trump's trade war with China was partially driven by the idea that the United States needed to restore its manufacturing base and prevent China from gaining dominance in critical technologies for national security reasons.The underpinnings of economic security have also been reinforced by the supply chain disruptions during the pandemic. As the United States struggled to gain access to face masks and test kits early in the pandemic, first the Trump administration and now the Biden administration have sought to bring supply chains closer to the United States or more deeply enmesh them with allies to better insulate the U.S. economy against future eco

May 26, 2022By Troy Stangarone
Economic security needs to work both ways
Troy Stangarone

What Yoon Suk-yeol can learn from Trump's presidency

By Troy StangaroneWhen Yoon Suk-yeol is sworn in on May 10, he will assume the presidency with little political experience. In many cases, his advisers will certainly give him good advice, but as he prepares to take office, President-elect Yoon should take a moment to consider what he can learn from Donald Trump's presidency in the United States.Any comparison to Trump has the potential to be fraught. He is a highly divisive figure whose supporters can often see no wrong and opponents can often see no right. But from a more objective standpoint, there are potential lessons.While Yoon and Trump come from different backgrounds, they share certain commonalities. Neither held elective office before ascending to the presidency and both will likely enter office as the least popular president-elects for their respective countries in modern times. There are differences between Yoon and Trump's situations, but the similarities suggest that Yoon may be able to draw lessons from Trump's experience. When Trump first announced his candidacy in June of 2015, he was not the dominant figure of the

May 2, 2022By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

Economic issues play larger role in Korea-U.S. relations

By Troy StangaroneAs with any incoming president, President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol's economic policies are still taking shape, but will likely be more market-oriented than the outgoing Moon Jae-in administration. How Yoon approaches economic issues, however, could have a more significant impact on the future of Korea-U.S. relations than under prior administrations. While economic issues have always played an important role in Korea-U.S. relations, North Korea has often dominated the discussion between the two allies due to its pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. This, however, has begun to change in recent years. Concerns have grown over China's role in the region and its efforts to dominate disruptive technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence, while the pandemic has heightened concerns about supply chains. Climate change has also increasingly become a focus of governments and businesses as the world moves to reduce emissions.The growing weight of these issues in Korea-U.S. relations was made clear in last May's joint statement from

Mar 31, 2022By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

Case for South Korean sanctions on Russia

By Troy StangaroneIf there was ever any illusion that Russia didn't intend to invade Ukraine, that is gone now. Russian troops have entered into Ukraine with the clear intent to remove its democratically elected government. While Ukraine may seem a world away from the Korean Peninsula, what happens on the plains of Eastern Europe will reverberate all of the way to Korea.Since the end of World War II, the world has worked to put in place institutions such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization in order to maintain the peace, allow for negotiated solutions to disputes, and for commerce to remain uninterrupted. Russia's actions in Ukraine will strain those institutions and norms, if not break them in a way that reshapes how states interact with each other ― and not for the better.For this reason alone South Korea's signal that it will support sanctions in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine is important. It is in the interest of members of the international community to defend international law and their own innate interest not to allow norms of military force or ec

Mar 1, 2022By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

Political polarization hinders talks with North Korea

By Troy StangaroneIn advance of the one-year anniversary of his inauguration, President Joe Biden lamented the challenges of political polarization for advancing his agenda. In noting the near universal Republican opposition to the majority of his agenda and the lack of a Republican platform for governing that might allow room for compromise, Biden asked rhetorically, “I wonder what would be the Republican platform right now. What do you think?”While much of Republican opposition to Biden and his agenda is driven by deepening political polarization in the United States, it does have implications for the administration's ability to pursue a positive agenda on North Korea.North Korea policy has historically been an area of bipartisan cooperation in Washington. Congress in recent years has passed legislation strengthening U.S. sanctions on North Korea by overwhelming majorities, but as the history of Iran sanctions demonstrates, removing those sanctions can be much more challenging.When the Obama administration negotiated the Iran nuclear deal, Congress used its authority ov

Feb 3, 2022By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

Three issues for US-Korea relations in 2022

By Troy StangaroneAfter four years of tensions over national security and trade, the United States and South Korea sought to reset relations in 2021. The election of Joe Biden as president of the United States allowed Washington and Seoul to reach a new agreement quickly on defense cost sharing and then agree to increase cooperation on issues ranging from supply chains to vaccine cooperation to climate change at the U.S.-Korea summit in May.As 2022 begins, the United States and South Korea face three key issues: how to best cooperate in managing the pandemic and its impact on economic and security cooperation, how to address the political and economic coercion that continue to increase globally and how to deal with North Korea.How the allies manage these three issues as South Korea begins its own presidential transition will be key to achieving progress in the year ahead. The pandemic, which has taken millions of lives globally, disrupted trade and heightened geopolitical tensions, is entering its third year. International coordination has been lacking during much of the pandemic. Bu

Jan 3, 2022By Troy Stangarone
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