U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump questioned why the United States would defend a “wealthy country,” adding, “I want South Korea to treat us properly.” As Seoul and Washington have since late last month engaged in defense cost-sharing negotiations, which will take effect from 2026, the former U.S. president calls for Seoul’s higher contributions while bringing up a plan to withdraw U.S. troops in South Korea. Back in 2019 when Trump served his first term, he demanded a five-fold contribution from South Korea. With this year’s presidential election coming up, the former president directly commented on this issue for the first time.
In an interview with Time magazine released on Tuesday (local time) ? around six months before the U.S. presidential election, Trump brought up South Korea’s cost sharing for stationing U.S. troops in the country when asked, “Would you withdraw troops from South Korea?” He said, “We have 40,000 troops that are in a precarious position. And I told South Korea that it's time that you step up and pay.” As of now, 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea. It was before the 1990s that 40,000 troops were deployed on the Korean Peninsula.
He argued that the U.S. government provided troops to South Korea during his term essentially for free, emphasizing that it was him who made negotiations so successful that Seoul agreed to pay billions of dollars. “And now probably now that I’m gone, they're paying very little. I don't know if you know that they renegotiated the deal I made,” he said. “From what I’m hearing, they were able to renegotiate with the Biden Administration and bring that number way, way down to what it was before, which was almost nothing.”
In 2019, Trump demanded that South Korea pay five billion dollars, five times higher than the level of contributions at the time. Despite little progress made, the two countries’ negotiations ended up being closed with the Biden administration in power. They agreed to increase Seoul’s contributions by 13.9 percent in the first year of 2019 and raise it annually by 2025 based on the rate of increase in national defense cost.
Trump implied that Washington would withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea unless it pays more for having them there, according to Time Magazine. Trump seems busy promoting his “America First” policy, bringing up the NATO and the KORUS alliance as a way of persuading voters, although he is currently facing courtroom issues with the presidential election happening in six months. Seoul and Washington are actively negotiating a so-called 12th Special Measures Agreement (SMA). However, if Trump returns, he would likely want to revisit the deal even if it is reached at this point.
In the interview, the former president also said that China is building factory lines of the world’s most enormous scale in Mexico to export cars to the U.S. market, adding, “I will tariff them at 100%.”
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