Benefits Of KORUS FTA

On March 15, 2012, a free trade agreement was officially put in place between South Korea and the United States (“Has”). Even before this agreement existed, Korea and the US had a good trade relationship. Although the trade agreement has not lived up to all of its expectations, it is still a beneficial agreement between the two nations. The South Korea and United States free trade agreement, or KORUS FTA, made many assurances of benefits for both Korea and the United States; however, both countries are only now beginning to see if this trade agreement lives up to all of its promises.
The KORUS FTA was created with the intentions of helping United States in terms of an increase in jobs and economic growth. Economic growth would come in the

Due to the fact that this agreement was put into action only a short time ago, some of these benefits were not even expected to occur by this time. Therefore, benefits that were predicted but that have not occurred yet still have a great chance of occurring at a later point in time. For example, there are some tariffs that are not planned to be taken away until ten years after the beginning of the agreement. Surely when those tariffs are removed, both countries will benefit, but it is not possible to see those benefits until that future point in time (“Benefits”). For this reason, there are still expectations that this agreement can and will fulfil when given the proper amount of

Oftentimes, something that is a positive result for one nation is a disadvantage for the other nation. One example of this that has resulted from this agreement is the fact that so far Korea has seen a trade surplus in trade with the United States. This is a great occurrence for them; however, as a result the US has been facing an increasing trade deficit. In a similar way, the increase of exports of agricultural products to Korea has created jobs and increased GDP for the US. On the other hand, Korea has suffered from this because their agricultural sector has decreases significantly as a result which had greatly decreased jobs available to people in this field of work. (“Has”) Pros and cons of a free trade agreement usually depend on what perspective is being viewed.
There are a couple outcomes of the KORUS FTA that have been beneficial to both countries. Because of the decrease in tariffs and subsequent investment in a foreign nation, both countries have experienced a employment increases, economic growth, technological growth, and industrial growth. In addition, when free trade agreements have been made with other nations, the people creating the FTA will look at the KORUS agreement in order to pull some aspects from it that have worked well. (“Has”) The fact that other nations are looking at this agreement gives evidence that it has been successful at completing its goals.