Duty Calls: Trump’s Tariffs and the Stakes of Korea’s Snap Election

Darcie Draudt-Véjares is a fellow for Korean studies in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

On June 3, Korean voters will head to the polls for a snap presidential election. The outcome will reverberate far beyond Korean domestic politics—resetting the strong U.S.-South Korea strategic partnership, recalibrating regional trade, and even redefining how a U.S. president manages its most stalwart allies.

The vote comes amid a period of political crisis triggered by President Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived martial-law decree in December 2024, which he issued in an attempt to break a parliamentary deadlock. After massive street protests and an extended Constitutional Court review, Yoon’s impeachment was finalized in early April but left in its wake deep partisan cleavages.

The next Korean president will have a difficult road ahead—not only to restore a sense of national unity but also to an increasingly difficult economic environment at home and abroad. Korean industrial output and exports in manufacturing, mining, services, and construction all fell earlier this year. The Bank of Korea cut interest rates and the growth outlook in February of this year but has remained cautious in the face of the Sino-U.S. trade war. While the overall employment rate hovers in the mid-second percentile, youth unemployment reached its highest point since the pandemic, hitting 7.5 percent in March.

With both political legitimacy and economic vitality in question, the next president must rebuild trust at home even as markets and allies judge whether Korea can still deliver on economic stability and alliance commitments.

Trump’s Tariffs and Alliance Strain

The current Korea-U.S. trade dynamic reflects South Korea’s broader alliance anxieties and highlights how Trump’s revived economic nationalism has once again thrust Seoul’s economy under a harsh spotlight.

Trump’s sweeping tariffs announced on April 2, which include a 25 percent duty on Korean imports, sharpened the campaign’s economic debate. That levy thrusts South Korea’s $66 billion surplus squarely into the administration’s crosshairs. Korea has long struggled to balance between the U.S.—its security guarantor—and China—its primary economic partner. But following Beijing’s economic coercion after the deployment of the THAAD missile system in 2016, Seoul has sought to shift away from its economic reliance on China—making keeping positive U.S.-Korea trade relations all the more important.

This isn’t the first time Trump has homed in on U.S.-Korean trade: during his first term, Trump lambasted the Korea-U.S. (KORUS) FTA—heralded by trade specialists as the “gold standard” of modern trade deals for its handling of IP and trade secrets protections—as a “horrible deal,” and ultimately forced a renegotiation in 2018 to revise some auto regulations.

In his March 4 Congress earlier this year, Trump again accused Korea of engaging in unfair trade practices, claiming, “South Korea’s average tariff is four times higher. Think of that. Four times higher,” even though tariff rates were virtually eliminated under the KORUS FTA is below 1 percent. Trump then framed remaining trade barriers as an affront to decades of U.S. security guarantees, declaring, “We give so much help militarily and in so many other ways to South Korea. But that’s what happens—this is happening by friend and foe.” Seoul, in a political crisis and governed by acting presidents, pursued a strategy of calibrated hedging while negotiating the tariffs—a tack that seemed the most measured in the given circumstance. Korean business leaders have also visited Washington to tout their expanded U.S. investments, and high‐level business delegations have lobbied to safeguard jobs and secure regulatory relief.

Economic Headwinds at the Polls

The tariffs have not only rattled boardrooms but also forced the current presidential candidates to choose between short-term relief and long-term alliance resilience. Indeed, economic angst has shaped the campaign nearly as much as the question of political credibility. The two front runners are Lee Jae-myung of the progressive Democratic Party and Kim Moon-soo of the conservative People’s Power Party. The conservatives are weighed down by the legacy of the impeached Yoon, and polling shows Lee has a healthy lead. A Gallup Korea poll from the fourth week of May shows Lee leading the field by nine points nationwide—45 percent to Kim Moon-soo’s 36 percent. Among self-identified centrists, Lee commands 49 percent support, more than double Kim’s 25 percent. A potential spoiler to watch is conservative third-party candidate Lee Jun-seok, who left the PPP last year and is now polling at 10 percent.

Korean parties have diverged sharply on economics, and new research shows the gap seems to be widening in this era of increased polarization. Historically, conservatives push business-friendly deregulation, while progressives advocate corporate reform and expanded welfare. True to form, Kim Moon-soo has vowed to cut red tape for businesses and overhaul a wage-setting system that requires union consent. The labor issue is particularly thorny for Kim, who began his political career as a labor activist and then later joined the conservative party, even serving as labor minister under Yoon.

By contrast, Lee offers a centrist, “pragmatic, national-interest-centric” platform, often described in Korean as “right-clicking” to capture moderate votes. As I demonstrate in my forthcoming report for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, this aligns with the broader pressures for an evolution of progressive foreign policy, and Lee is at the forefront of a sea change in DP politics. While he gained steam as a candidate in the 2022 election against Yoon partly due to his pitch for a universal basic income, that more liberal pledge has been shelved for this cycle.

In the campaign’s first televised debate on Sunday, the Trump tariffs loomed large, but the frontrunners offered different approaches: Kim emphasized speed, and Lee emphasized principle. Kim pledged to hold trade talks with Trump as quickly as possible and also linked the economic and security legs of the U.S. alliance, noting that “Without security, there would be no economy to save.” Lee, by contrast, offered a “national interest first” approach. “There will be room for negotiation,” said Lee, believing that Trump does not expect to remain at the 25 percent rate, going on to say, “We shouldn’t rush into anything.”

While the contest of personalities has taken center stage, June’s vote will also ask Korean voters to choose whether Seoul leans into this new progressive pragmatism or reasserts the conservative status quo—and each path carries profound implications for both economic well-being and U.S. relations.

The U.S.-Korea Trade Summit Test

Whether progressive or conservative, the victor will inherit not only Yoon’s fractured country but also a White House eager to test Korea’s resolve on trade. A savvy negotiating team—which has already dispatched high-level envoys to Washington—has already laid the groundwork, but important challenges remain, and they will not only be encountered at the negotiating table. Following their APEC ministers’ sideline meeting on May 16, Trade Minister Ahn Duk-geun warned that Seoul risks missing the July tariff deal deadline if domestic politics interfere.

Equally important will be building the personal rapport Trump prizes. For lessons, Korea can look to Japan and the example set by former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, whose personal rapport with President Trump—cultivated during golf outings—yielded tangible diplomatic breakthroughs. However, both Lee Jae-myung and Kim Moon-soo—self-made politicians from non-elite backgrounds—stand in stark contrast to the elite-educated leaders Trump has historically courted. Whoever sits across from Trump must translate electoral legitimacy into a winning posture at the summit table.