By Katie Hettinga
This week, Trump proclaimed via Truth Social that he was increasing tariffs on South Korea to 25%. That’s quite an increase from the 15% rate the White House negotiated with South Korea in a “trade agreement” announced by Trump just last fall. Trump blamed the tariff increase on the South Korean National Assembly’s failure to enact the promised agreement. But speculation abounds that the threats actually are related to South Korean regulation of large digital companies. South Korea has accused several home-grown firms of monopolistic abuses and breaches of consumers’ data security and is cracking down on the behavior. South Korea’s app store competition law is the model for the leading U.S. bipartisan bill tackling the Apple-Google app store duopoly, and a pending anti-monopoly law is under attack by U.S. Big Tech because it could also set a global standard.
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Originally published in The Economic Populist — a project of the American Economic Liberties Project.