What Do the Biden Administration’s Trade and Economic Policies Mean for Korea?

While U.S. President Joe Biden has only been in office about two months, there are already signs that suggest how his administration's priorities could affect South Korea.

As Rob Atkinson writes in a column for The Korea Times, the most important thing to understand is that U.S. policy will not return to the status quo that existed before President Donald Trump. Since the Cold War, U.S. trade policy was largely crafted to achieve broad foreign policy goals, even at the cost of U.S. economic competitiveness.

For decades, the most important priorities were to assure global security and to constrain the Soviet Union. In recent years, priorities have included fighting Islamic terrorism, as well as issues such as human rights and climate change.

But today, America's relative economic and technological strength is so diminished from where it was even 20 years ago that it can no longer afford that approach.