South Korean Election Favorite Sees No Need to Rush for US Deal

Lee Jae-myung Photographer: Woohae Cho/Bloomberg Photo by Woohae Cho /Bloomberg

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(Bloomberg) — South Korea’s leading presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung said there’s no need to rush into an early agreement in trade negotiations with the US, criticizing the interim government for what he called its hasty engagement with the Trump administration.

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During the first head-to-head television debate with his rivals on Sunday, Lee, the nominee of the opposition Democratic Party, said the US doesn’t necessarily have an “overwhelming upper hand” in tariff negotiations. 

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“The US would have many demands but I don’t think they intend to get them all,” Lee said, speaking alongside three other presidential hopefuls during the live debate. “We don’t need to be the first to step forward, rushing to reach an early deal.”

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South Koreans are set to elect their next leader on June 3 in a snap vote triggered by the impeachment of ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol. Latest polling shows Lee leading the race with a 51% support rate. 

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South Korea, a US ally, was slapped with a 25% across-the-board tariff, which was temporarily lowered to 10% for 90 days starting in early April. South Korea also faces 25% duties on its exports of cars, steel and aluminum.

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The South Korean economy’s dependence on exports makes it especially vulnerable to Trump’s trade policies. 

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Kim Moon-soo, the nominee of the conservative People Power Party, said that if elected he would seek a summit with Trump to resolve the tariffs issue. 

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The candidates were divided over almost every issue raised during the debate, from the use of nuclear energy to deterring an increasingly aggressive North Korea.

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Lee said nuclear power was not the most desirable option for meeting energy needs and called for expanding sources of renewable energy, while Kim touted nuclear as a cheap and safe source for power generation. 

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On foreign policy, Kim said South Korea should pursue “nuclear balance” to step up its security against North Korea. Lee dismissed talk of the country’s own nuclear armaments as unrealistic. “There’s no way the US will approve it,” Lee said. 

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Kim has in the past called for moving one step closer to the threshold of producing nuclear weapons if needed and discussing NATO-like nuclear sharing with the US if North Korean threats grow.

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The election of South Korea’s next president will be a crucial step in putting the export powerhouse back on track after Yoon’s shock martial law decree in December unleashed the country’s worst constitutional crisis in decades. 

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Earlier Sunday Lee proposed a constitutional amendment to shorten the presidency from a single, five-year term to a tenure of four years that would also allow two consecutive terms, calling it a move to better balance power.