Washington: Under his America First leitmotif, incoming U.S. President Donald Trump appears poised to bring a shift in the United States' approach to the alliance with South Korea, North Korea's unabated nuclear threats, trade, and other key issues. Trump will take the oath of office in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday as the U.S.' 47th president amid expectations that he will employ a diplomatic playbook that seeks to curtail America's costly overseas engagement, pressure allies to shoulder more security burden, and redress U.S. trade deficits for the sake of American interests.
According to Yonhap News Agency, Trump's swearing-in comes as South Korea is reeling from the aftermath of now-impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol's botched martial law bid last month. The current period of political uncertainty is feared to weaken Seoul's hands in policy coordination with the Trump administration. In his second term, Trump's America First credo is expected to be an overarching theme of his administration's policy formulation and implementation given that he has named stalwart loyalists for Cabinet posts in the absence of the "axis of adults" that can help stably guide the U.S.' foreign and security policy.
U.S. allies like South Korea have now been bracing for the return of Trump's perceived transactional foreign policy approach-a far cry from the Biden administration's formula centering on rebuilding and cementing a network of allies and partners as America's "greatest strategic asset." "We know the transition from the Biden to the Trump administration represents a significant shift in how the United States approaches allies," Patrick Cronin, chair for Asia-Pacific Security at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, told Yonhap News Agency via email.
In South Korea, concerns have persisted that Trump could demand Seoul raise its financial contributions to the stationing of the 28,500-strong U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), though a new cost-sharing deal for the 2026-30 period was signed last year. Trump has already asserted the need for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states to spend 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense-much higher than the current 2 percent guideline of the transatlantic alliance.
When it comes to diplomacy toward North Korea, expectations remain high that Trump might seek to resume his direct diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. During his time in office, Trump employed a direct leader-to-leader approach with the North, leading to three in-person meetings with Kim, including the first-ever bilateral summit in Singapore in 2018, though serious nuclear talks have been stalled since the no-deal summit in Hanoi in February 2019.
Still, it remains to be seen whether Pyongyang has an appetite to reengage with Washington as it now relies on Russia for food, fuel, security assistance, and other forms of support in the wake of its support for Moscow's protracted war in Ukraine. In Seoul, concerns have persisted that with Yoon's suspension from official duties and the absence of a fully elected president in office, policy coordination with the Trump administration could weaken, or South Korea could be sidelined or bypassed during Trump's diplomacy toward Pyongyang.
Trump's unconventional, uncertainty-laced brand of diplomacy has been what keeps allies and partners on edge. Recently, Trump took them by surprise when he refused to rule out using military or economic coercion to retake the canal that Panama took control of in 1999 and acquire Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory-a move that some say has laid bare an expansionist facet of his foreign policy.
On trade, Trump is poised to introduce new tariffs on all imported goods-a measure that would also affect South Korea's trade with the world's largest economy. He has pledged to slap blanket tariffs of 10 to 20 percent on all imports and threatened to impose tariffs of up to 60 percent on Chinese goods. During his Senate confirmation hearing this month, Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent said that under the incoming administration, tariffs will be used for remedying unfair trade practices by China and other countries as well as for negotiations.