By David Brunnstrom and Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to South Korea vowed on Wednesday to press South Korea to learn where the $350 billion Seoul has pledged to invest in the United States will come from.
Former California congresswoman Michelle Steel also told her Senate confirmation hearing that U.S. firms in South Korea deserved the same market access Korean companies enjoy in the United States.
Last year Washington and Seoul agreed the broad outlines of an agreement on trade and investment under which South Korea committed to invest $350 billion in the United States in return for more favorable tariff terms. But details have been sparse and implementation slow, prompting Trump to threaten in January to raise tariffs on South Korean goods to 25% from the 15% noted in the deal.
Tensions have since eased, and a South Korean law implementing the investment pledge goes into force next month. Steel, however, said Washington was still waiting for key details.
“I’m going to sit down with the Korean government and whoever that is (in) control of these trade issues, because that joint fact sheet is not really clear about that $350 billion,” Steel said in response to a question from Republican Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska.
“So I want to see exactly where that’s coming from,” Steel said, adding that South Korea currently had a trade surplus with the United States of $50 billion.
“I always think that free trade is always win-win, and we can renegotiate,” Steel said, adding that she would “love to see … how we’re going to actually export more to South Korea.”
Ricketts said the U.S. Trade Representative’s March National Trade Estimate Report highlighted a broad range of South Korean barriers that continued to stifle American agricultural and digital services, despite Seoul’s pledge to eliminate them.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, senior Democrat on the Republican-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said there had been no transparency about how $350 billion would be spent and the Trump administration had also not been transparent about a deal with Japan.
She asked Steel if she would commit to sharing information with the committee about where the money would come from and go to and the nominee replied: “Yes, I do.”
The ambassador’s post has been vacant throughout Trump’s second term, despite South Korea’s status as a key ally. It requires Senate approval.
South Korea’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; additional reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Don Durfee and Daniel Wallis)
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