South Korea's President says US investment demands would spark financial crisis
15 comments
·September 22, 2025anigbrowl
akudha
insisted on having everything in writing
Just curious, how would this help with anything, other than documentation purposes?
slater
Paper trail, to be referenced later, so TFG can't be all "huh, never said that, never agreed to that" etc. etc.
somenameforme
People are confused about what these published agreements (like with the EU as well) are. They're not legal agreements, treaties, or even executive orders, although the corresponding orders to reduce the tariffs are of course executive orders.
But the agreements themselves are completely informal and an overview of what the US expects to see happen in order to maintain the tariff reductions. The interpretation of whether the other country or group of countries is abiding the agreement is entirely at the discretion of Trump.
So there's no such thing as a loop hole. If Trump isn't satisfied with e.g. the EU's progress towards implementing said agreement, he can increase tariffs back to where they were at his discretion, with or without reason given. So there's no such thing as a loop hole in this sort of agreement.
calmbonsai
Agreed. It was, initially, quite alarming (though no longer anymore) at how different the actual words in the Executive Orders differ from what was said about the policies they were, ostensibly, enforcing or creating.
JumpCrisscross
The truth is Trump is a bad negotiator. He's easily played. He's also predictably dishonest. The only real move is to string him along, which he seems to be glad to do, particularly if someone flatters or threatens to punch him.
wombatpm
He negotiates in bad faith. No deal is final. He will change the terms to meet his whims.
The Chinese understand. Notice how there are no soybean purchases from China this year. They do not trust the US on important things like food.
sidcool
There's a problem here. World depending so much on one country. It's a single point of failure.
ares623
Up until recently it was a good trade-off.
instagib
$350 billion investment to avoid tariffs.
“Trump says the investments will be "selected" by him and controlled by the U.S., meaning Washington would have discretion over where the money will be invested.”
dchftcs
You can choose to invest 350 billion in the real economy, or 350 million in TrumpCoin.
JumpCrisscross
> $350 billion investment to avoid tariffs
$500 billion for Stargate!
How many of Trump's investment deals from the first term panned out?
charcircuit
>“Without a currency swap, if we were to withdraw $350 billion in the manner that the U.S. is demanding and to invest this all in cash in the U.S., South Korea would face a situation as it had in the 1997 financial crisis,” he said through a translator.
So do a currency swap? South Korea isn't failing, do surely there would people to offer liquidity or financing to make it possible.
awilson5454
I’m not convinced that we know more about South Korea’s economic situation than their Prime Minister’s office.
msy
There aren't a lot of counterparties to a $350Bn currency swap. SK is manoeuvring to make the Fed offering the swap and thus taking the FX risk as a requirement for this deal, which is I suspect why you're reading about this.
You're going ot keep seeing more of this. The Japanese went through multiple rounds of the WH announcing they'd reached a deal and the Japanese saying politely but firmly that negotiations were still ongoing. The Japanese insisted on having everything in writing, and if you look at the executive order that was eventually published it's full of loopholes like 'best efforts' and 'aspirations' that articulate shared goals, but little the in the way of binding commitments.