This mix of file pictures reveals Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, left, talking at at a city corridor in Lancaster, Pa., Oct. 20, and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, proper, talking at a marketing campaign rally in Erie, Pa., Oct. 14. AP-Yonhap
With the U.S. presidential election simply 10 days away, international consideration is popping to outlooks for America’s post-election international coverage that will have an effect on its alliance with South Korea, method to an intransigent North Korea and strategic competitors with China to call just a few.
Uncertainty nonetheless shrouds the high-stakes race for the White Home as Democratic standard-bearer Kamala Harris and her Republican rival Donald Trump are caught in a useless warmth, with varied polls exhibiting skinny margins within the total swing state contest that may probably decide the result of the Nov. 5 common election.
To occupy the Oval Workplace, a candidate should win a minimum of 270 electoral votes out of the full 538 electors representing the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Seven battleground states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina — are anticipated to play an outsize position in hitting that magic quantity.
It stays unsure when a winner will probably be named. Within the 2020 election that proceeded amid COVID-19, President Joe Biden’s victory was introduced 4 days after the vote. However the 2016 election was known as for Trump within the wee hours of the morning after Election Day.
South Korea has been keenly watching developments within the White Home race as a brand new U.S. president might deliver a coverage shift at a time when it seeks to align extra intently with Washington amid North Korea’s evolving nuclear and missile threats and its deepening navy partnership with Russia.
Harris, 60, and Trump, 78, are seen envisioning divergent coverage approaches in lots of respects, like their stark contrasts by way of age, gender, race, coverage inclinations and political inclinations.
The vp has vowed to agency up America’s international management if elected, elevating expectations that she might forge forward with a key tenet of Biden’s international coverage that facilities on cementing a community of U.S. allies and companions to confront shared challenges, together with North Korean threats and Russia’s protracted battle in Ukraine.
“I’ll ensure that we lead the world into the long run, that America, not China, wins the competitors for the twenty first century, and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our international management,” she stated in her speech accepting her social gathering’s presidential nomination in August.
In a latest submit on X, Harris confused, “The president of the USA should not take a look at the world by means of the slim lens of ideology, petty partisanship, or as an instrument for their very own ambitions.”
According to this view, the Democratic flag-bearer is anticipated to pursue sturdier multilateral safety cooperation by means of trilateral or different fit-for-purpose platforms, resembling tripartite cooperation with Seoul and Tokyo, and the Quad grouping involving the U.S., India, Japan and Australia.
Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump leaves the stage after a marketing campaign rally on the Bryce Jordan Heart in State Faculty, Pa., Oct. 26. AFP-Yonhap
Trump has been hammering away at his “America first” coverage imaginative and prescient, which critics have warned would heap strain on U.S. allies and companions to do extra to handle shared challenges whereas limiting America’s pricey, burdensome involvement abroad.
His imaginative and prescient has stoked considerations that America might shift to an inward-looking, “isolationist” coverage method. Throughout Trump’s presidency, the U.S. withdrew from varied international establishments, together with the Paris Local weather Settlement, the then Trans-Pacific Partnership and UNESCO.
However Trump might selectively search cost-effective multilateral engagements with U.S. allies and companions, like trilateral safety cooperation with South Korea and Japan, observers stated.
The previous president’s emphasis on burden sharing has been fueling considerations that he might demand renegotiation of a latest protection cost-sharing cope with South Korea, known as the Particular Measures Settlement (SMA), ought to he return to workplace.
Seoul and Washington concluded the SMA negotiations this month — sooner than ordinary — as considerations have continued that Trump, if reelected, might name for a hefty enhance in Seoul’s share of the price for stationing the 28,500-strong U.S. Forces Korea.
Underneath the deal, Seoul is to pay 1.52 trillion received ($1.09 billion) in 2026, up from 1.4 trillion received in 2025. However Trump stated just lately that if he was within the White Home, South Korea can be paying $10 billion a yr below a protection cost-sharing deal, whereas calling South Korea a “cash machine.”
On North Korea’s nuclear quandary, Harris is anticipated to emphasize cooperation with Seoul and Tokyo and double down on efforts to beef up deterrence in opposition to evolving North Korean threats whereas leaving open the door for diplomacy with the recalcitrant regime.
Throughout her nomination speech in August, she stated she won’t “cozy as much as tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un who’re rooting for Trump” — remarks that indicated that if elected, she would perform a standard diplomatic method quite than searching for direct diplomacy with the North Korean ruler.
At a marketing campaign rally later, Trump hit again, saying that “getting alongside” with Kim is a “good factor” — an announcement that raised the probability of the previous president reviving his private diplomacy towards Pyongyang if reelected.
Throughout his time in workplace, Trump employed a direct leader-to-leader method to the North, main to 3 high-profile conferences with Kim, together with the first-ever bilateral summit in Singapore in 2018, although severe nuclear talks have been stalled for the reason that no-deal summit in Hanoi in February 2019.
On the Hanoi summit, the North Korean chief provided to dismantle the mainstay Yongbyon nuclear complicated, however Trump apparently needed extra concessions because the U.S. noticed the complicated as solely part of the North’s sprawling nuclear program.
On the financial entrance, Harris has been pitching her drive for an “alternative financial system” aimed toward strengthening America’s middle-class and supporting small companies as she has vowed to chart a “new method ahead” to a future the place “everybody has the chance not simply to get by, however to get forward.”
Her financial coverage proposals embody a baby tax credit score price as much as $6,000 in complete tax aid for households with new child kids and the growth of the earned revenue tax credit score as she has been searching for to court docket middle-class and low-income households.
Nevertheless, Trump’s focus has been on elevating tariffs and decreasing company taxes for corporations that manufacture their merchandise within the U.S. as he has been eyeing “manufacturing renaissance” below his “new American industrialism.” His stance is anticipated to have an effect on South Korean corporations doing enterprise with America.
“Vote for Trump, and you will note a mass exodus of producing from China to Pennsylvania, from Korea to North Carolina, from Germany to proper right here in Georgia,” he stated in a marketing campaign speech final month. “They’ll come to Georgia from Germany and different locations.”
Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks throughout acampaign occasion at Wings Occasion Heart in Kalamazoo, Mich., Oct. 26. Reuters-Yonhap
Trump has stated he may slap tariffs of as much as 20 p.c on all U.S. imports whereas proposing a 60 p.c tariff on Chinese language items. He additionally instructed he may impose a tariff of 100% or extra on each automotive coming throughout the Mexican border.
Whoever is inaugurated as president in January subsequent yr, the Sino-U.S. relationship is anticipated to be tense as the 2 superpowers’ strategic competitors continues to accentuate over a variety of points, together with maritime safety and technological management.
In accordance with the Worldwide Disaster Group, a Brussels-headquartered assume tank, Trump primarily sees U.S.-China relations by means of the “lens of commerce” and seems dedicated to accelerating financial decoupling between Washington and Beijing.
“His first administration and his marketing campaign statements underscore a essentially transactional mindset, whereby he subordinates most different targets — strengthening U.S. alliances and partnerships in Asia and enhancing human rights circumstances inside China, for instance — to that of making what he sees as a extra balanced financial relationship with Beijing,” the assume tank stated in a report launched on its web site this month.
Noting Harris’ background as a baby of civil rights advocates and as a practising lawyer, the Disaster Group stated that her background might present ample fodder for bilateral frictions, although she additionally has a “pragmatic streak.”
The assume tank additionally anticipated that Harris, if elected, might construct on the Biden administration’s coverage legacy, together with the method to “put money into U.S. capability at house, align with allies and companions and compete with Beijing the place warranted.” (Yonhap)
