Yonhap | 20 October 2010
Korea, U.S. lawmakers sent letter urging Lee, Obama to change Korea FTA's text: report
By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 (Yonhap) -- Scores of South Korean and U.S. lawmakers recently sent a letter to their presidents to seek "meaningful changes" to the free trade deal pending for more than three years over autos and beef, reports said Tuesday.
The letter was signed by Rep. Chung Dong-young of the largest opposition Democratic Party and 34 other opposition lawmakers on the South Korean side, and Rep. Mike Michaud (D-ME) and 20 other congressmen on the U.S. side, World Trade Online, an online trade magazine, said on its Web site.
U.S. President Barack Obama instructed U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk in June to complete talks with South Korea over beef and autos before he flies to Seoul for the G-20 economic summit meeting in mid-November. He said he would like to present the deal to Congress early next year.
Obama has not yet submitted the Korea FTA, signed in 2007, to Congress due to lopsided auto trade and restricted shipments of beef amid rising protectionist sentiment in the worst recession in decades.
The letter calls for the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism and financial services, according to the report.
This week's letter demands that the FTA should "state more explicitly our countries' intention to maintain our high health, labor and environmental standards" because this will "minimize the risk of foreign corporations challenging these policies as burdensome on their businesses," the report said.
The letter also calls on South Korea and the U.S. to "clarify explicitly that this agreement protects our government's ability to regulate investment or the financial markets in the event of another financial crisis."
Kirk said recently that he will sideline other issues aside from autos and beef to complete talks with South Korea by next month, despite calls by a number of U.S. industries to revisit clauses on textiles, financial services, investment, labor provisions and even refrigerators.
South Korean Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis got together in Paris early this month but failed to reach an agreement on how to address U.S. concerns over an imbalance in auto trade and limited shipments of U.S. beef.
Marantis did not put forth concrete proposals on the auto and beef issues, the USTR has said.
Kim has said that Seoul is ready to address any problems to be raised by the U.S. on non-tariff barriers or unfair trade practices, but added he would not accept the U.S. calls for "a balance in the trade of certain products."
Proponents of the Korea FTA fear any further delay in ratification will undermine the competitiveness of U.S. products in South Korea, the seventh biggest export market of the U.S., as Seoul signed an agreement last week with the EU for the provisional implementation of the bilateral free trade deal from July.
