Trump mulls canceling South Korean trade deal during North Korean tensions


President Trump is mulling an exit from KORUS, the United States–Korea Free Trade Agreement, The New York Times reported Saturday, citing unnamed senior administration officials. The Associated Press reported the same story based on a U.S Chamber of Commerce statement to members opposing cancellation.
KORUS is a bilateral Obama-era trade deal that Trump believes is unfair to the United States, and the president said in Houston Saturday that KORUS is "very much on my mind." A White House statement to the Times said "discussions are ongoing" but did not provide any further details; Gary Cohn, Trump's top economic adviser, supports maintaining the agreement.
This comes as the United States reiterates its alliance with Seoul amid North Korea tensions. Pyongyang on Sunday claimed to have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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