President Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. has an unfair, lopsided trade and military relationship with key ally South Korea he prepares for historic talks with rival North Korea to neutralize the rogue regime’s threatening nuclear weapons program.
In audio obtained by the Washington Examiner, Trump told an audience of Republican donors at a Missouri fundraiser for presumptive GOP Senate nominee Josh Hawley, the state attorney general, that the U.S. loses money on economic trade with South Korea. He said the stationing of thousands of U.S. troops on the border with North Korea since the armistice that ended fighting in the Korean War also has been a net loss to Washington.
“It’s so unfair what’s happened to our country. And I don’t know, the politicians have lost their way. In some cases like South Korea, you know they’re making a fortune. Well, we backed them many years ago. When they became rich, we never changed the deal. So we were backing, backing, backing, and no politician ever changed the deal. Now we have a very big trade deficit with them — and we protect them. So we lose money on the trade and we lose money on the military,” Trump said, during a low-key version of his typical stump speech.
This isn’t the first time Trump has complained about Washington’s military and economic arrangements with Seoul. As far back as the 2016 campaign, the president lamented the trade ties between the two countries as tilted toward South Korea, while questioning the value to national security of maintaining a military presence on the Korean Peninsula.
But it comes as Trump is preparing for historic talks with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean dictator who has defied the international community to develop a nuclear weapons program and used it to threaten the U.S.
Kim invited Trump to meet with him without preconditions, and the president accepted, garnering plaudits for his willingness to engage in diplomacy and some criticism for granting Pyongyang a presidential audience that could legitimize his regime and further strengthen his hold on his country.
Trump dismissed the critics, and explained that what appeared to be bluster from him in the months leading up to North Korea’s apparent olive branch was his way of pushing them to negotiate. Pyongyang has a history of responding to U.S. threats with negotiations, only to secretly pursue their nuclear program and break any agreement reached with Washington.
“So, they’re all saying, ‘his rhetoric is terrible, it’s so tough — Little Rocket Man — you know all this stuff, it’s so terrible, and, he’s going to get us into a war.’ Well you know what’s going to get us into a war, is weakness. We put massive sanctions on North Korea, massive, like nobody’s ever been sanctioned. And in all fairness, China has really helped, at the border. They could help more, but they’ve done more for us than they’ve ever done for any president, that I can tell you,” Trump said.
In describing how he ended up agreeing to meet with Kim, Trump related how the South Korean government presented the invitation from the North Korean strongman.
“The the delegation comes over from South Korea, and they had just left North Korea, and they said: ‘Mr. President, Kim Jong Un would love to meet with you and he will not do any testing and he will not do any missile launches, he’d love to meet with you.’ So I said, really, wow, that’s good, how did that happen? They said, well, you’re having an impact,” Trump said.
