Business
South Korea struggles with uncertainty over U.S. trade negotiations
SEOUL — As the Trump administration has been churning out trade threats this week, South Korea, a crucial trading partner and military ally, has been struggling — like many — to navigate the uncertainty that looms over trade negotiations with Washington.
On Monday, Trump sent a letter dictating new tariff rates to 14 countries including South Korea, which was hit with a 25% tax. The levies were set to kick in Tuesday, but were postponed to Aug. 1. Trump left the door open for another extension, telling reporters the new deadline was “firm but not 100% firm,” depending on what trade partners could offer.
But it’s unclear whether the additional three weeks will be enough to resolve the longstanding disagreements between Washington and Seoul. One of the biggest points of contention is South Korea’s auto industry, which was the third biggest exporter of automobiles to the U.S. last year.
Although White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that Trump’s phone was ringing “off the hook from world leaders all the time who are begging him to come to a deal,” the tone in Seoul has been reserved.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, left, walks across the tarmac on Sunday as President Trump boards Air Force One. On Monday, Trump dictated new tariff rates to 14 countries, including a 25% tax on South Korea.
(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)
Last week, ahead of the initial July 8 deadline, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who took office last month, said “it’s difficult to say for certain that we can finish [the trade talks] by July 8.”
“Both sides are doing their best and we need to come up with an outcome that can be mutually beneficial to both parties, but we still have not yet been able to clearly establish what each party wants,” he added.
Since then, senior South Korean trade officials have been dispatched to Washington with the hopes of bringing a deal within striking distance.
“It’s time to speed up the negotiations and find a landing zone,” Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo said after meeting with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Monday.
So far, the only two countries that have struck new trade deals with the Trump administration are the U.K. and Vietnam.
But the Lee administration has maintained a note of caution. At a high-level meeting held Tuesday to discuss the current state of the negotiations, Lee’s presidential chief of staff for policy, Kim Yong-beom, reportedly emphasized the “national interest” over speedy dealmaking, instructing officials to support tariff-affected industries and “diversify” South Korea’s export markets.
Under a decades-long free trade agreement, South Korean tariffs on most U.S. goods are already zero, meaning there are fewer concessions Seoul can offer, analysts say. And on the key points of contention such as automobiles, there is little daylight to be found.
“This announcement will send a chilling message to others,” Wendy Cutler, vice president of the Washington-based Asia Society Policy Institute and former deputy U.S. trade negotiator, said in a post on X.
Trump’s letter also suggested that the U.S. will “not be open to reprieves” from sectoral tariffs, including those on automobiles, Cutler added.
South Korean trade officials have stressed that removing or significantly reducing the 25% tariffs on cars is a top priority.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt holds a trade letter sent by the White House to South Korea during a news conference on Monday.
(Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But South Korean cars from Hyundai and Kia factor significantly into the $66-billion trade deficit that Trump has decried as unfair. Last year, South Korea was the third biggest exporter of automobiles to the United States, to the tune of $34.7 billion. It bought $2.1 billion worth of cars from the U.S.
Until now, the country’s flagship automakers Hyundai and Kia have been able to sidestep any major tariff shocks, achieving instead record sales in the first half of the year by selling existing inventory in the U.S.
But many believe it is only a matter of time until they will have to raise vehicle sticker prices, as some competitors have done. Both companies’ operating profits are now forecasted to hit double-digit declines compared with the previous year.
The U.S. has also reportedly demanded concessions that touch on sensitive issues of food or national security in South Korea — a far harder sell to the public than the expanded manufacturing cooperation that South Korea has sought to center in the trade talks.
Among these are opening up South Korea’s rice market to U.S. imports and allowing Google to export high-precision geographic data to its servers outside of South Korea.
As an essential crop that represents a significant portion of farmers’ incomes, rice is one of the few heavily protected goods in South Korea’s trade relationships. Under its free trade agreement with the United States, Seoul imposes a 5% tariff on U.S. rice up to 132,304 tons, and 513% for anything after that.
U.S. Army soldiers attend a ceremony last month in Dongducheon, South Korea. A 2021 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that it cost $19.2 billion to maintain American troops in South Korea from 2016 through 2019.
(Kim Jae-Hwan / SOPA Images via Getty Images)
The South Korean government has long denied Google’s requests to export high-precision geographic data — which is used for the company’s map services — on the grounds that it could reveal sensitive military sites that are essential for defense against North Korea. Last year, Ukraine accused Google of exposing the locations of some of its military systems to Russia.
Equally vexing are Trump’s long-running demands that Seoul should pay more to host the some 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.
“South Korea is making a lot of money, and they’re very good. They’re very good, but, you know, they should be paying for their own military,” Trump said at a White House Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, adding that he told South Korea it should pay $10 billion a year.
Over a four-year period from 2016 through 2019, the total cost of maintaining U.S. troops in South Korea was $19.2 billion, or around $4.8 billion a year, according to a 2021 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Over that period, South Korea footed about 30% of the total annual costs, in addition to providing indirect financial support such as waived taxes or foregone rents.
Under the Special Measures Agreement, the joint framework that governs this arrangement, Seoul’s payments have grown over time. Under the latest version, which covers 2026 to 2030, Seoul’s annual contribution beginning next year will be $1.19 billion, an 8.3% increase from 2025, and will increase yearly thereafter.
Trump’s demand for nearly 10 times that — along with the threats that the U.S. might pull its troops from the country — has previously drawn widespread outrage in the country, spurring calls by some for the development of South Korea’s own nuclear arsenal.
“The Special Measures Agreement (SMA) guarantees stable conditions for U.S. troops stationed in Korea and strengthens the joint South Korea – U.S. defense posture,” a spokesperson for South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in response to Trump’s comments.
“Our stance is that the South Korean government will adhere to the 12th SMA, which was agreed upon and implemented in a legitimate manner.”
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
A former female staffer who worked for Beast Industries, the media venture behind the popular YouTube channel MrBeast, is suing the company, alleging she was sexually harassed and fired shortly after she returned from maternity leave.
The employee, Lorrayne Mavromatis, a Brazilian-born social media professional, alleges in a lawsuit she was subjected to sexual harassment by the company’s management and demoted after she complained about her treatment. She said she was urged to join a conference call while in labor and expected to work during her maternity leave in violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act, according to the federal complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
“This clout-chasing complaint is built on deliberate misrepresentations and categorically false statements, and we have the receipts to prove it. There is extensive evidence — including Slack and WhatsApp messages, company documents, and witness testimony — that unequivocally refutes her claims. We will not submit to opportunistic lawyers looking to manufacture a payday from us,” Gaude Paez, a Beast Industries spokesperson, said in a statement.
Jimmy Donaldson, 27, began MrBeast as a teen gaming channel that soon exploded into a media company worth an estimated $5 billion, with 500 employees and 450 million subscribers who watch its games, stunts and giveaways.
Mavromatis, who was hired in 2022 as its head of Instagram, described a pervasive climate of discrimination and harassment, according to the lawsuit.
In her complaint, she alleges the company’s former CEO James Warren made her meet him at his home for one-on-one meetings while he commented on her looks and dismissed her complaints about a male client’s unwanted advances, telling her “she should be honored that the client was hitting on her.”
When Mavromatis asked Warren why MrBeast, Donaldson, would not work with her, she was told that “she is a beautiful woman and her appearance had a certain sexual effect on Jimmy,” and, “Let’s just say that when you’re around and he goes to the restroom, he’s not actually using the restroom.”
Paez refuted the claim.
“That’s ridiculous. This is an allegation fabricated for the sole purpose of sparking headlines,” Paez said.
Mavromatis said she endured a slate of other indignities such as being told by Donaldson that she “would only participate in her video shoot if she brought him a beer.”
“In this male-centric workplace, Plaintiff, one of the few women in a high-level role, was excluded from otherwise all-male meetings, demeaned in front of colleagues, harassed, and suffered from males be given preferential treatment in employment decisions,” states the complaint.
When Mavromatis raised a question during a staff meeting with her team, she said a male colleague told her to “shut up” or “stop talking.”
At MrBeast headquarters in Greenville, N.C., she said male executives mocked female contestants participating in BeastGames, “who complained they did not have access to feminine hygiene products and clean underwear while participating in the show.”
In November 2023, Mavromatis formally complained about “the sexually inappropriate encounters and harassment, and demeaning and hostile work environment she and other female employees had been living and experiencing working at MrBeast,” to the company’s then head of human resources, Sue Parisher, who is also Donaldson’s mother, according to the suit.
In her complaint, Mavromatis said Beast Industries did not have a method or process for employees to report such issues either anonymously or to a third party, rather employees were expected to follow the company’s handbook, “How to Succeed In MrBeast Production.”
In it, employees were instructed that, “It’s okay for the boys to be childish,” “if talent wants to draw a dick on the white board in the video or do something stupid, let them” and “No does not mean no,” according to the complaint.
Mavromatis alleges that she was demoted and then fired.
Paez said that Mavromatis’s role was eliminated as part of a reorganization of an underperforming group within Beast Industries and that she was made aware of this.
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