South Korea says US will lower tariffs, agreement reached on trade
President Donald Trump is presented with the Grand Order of Mugunghwa and the Silla gold crown by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at the Gyeongju National Museum, October 29, 2025 in Gyeongju, South Korea. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(GYEONGIU, South Korea) – South Korea announced on Wednesday that it has reached an agreement on details of the trade deal with the U.S., following a bilateral meeting between President Donald Trump and President Lee Jae Myung, as well as months of negotiations.
President Lee’s chief of staff said the tariffs the U.S. imposes on automobile exports will be lowered to 15% from 25%. The framework deal from July lowered the reciprocal rate to 15% and that will be maintained.
Back in July, South Korea pledged to invest $350 billion into the U.S. Lee’s chief of staff said a $200 billion investment will be made in installments of up to $20 billion cash payments each year. Another $150 billion will be invested in the U.S. shipbuilding industry.
This now puts the auto tariffs South Korea will pay in line with those on Japan.
The White House has not responded to request for comment about the tariffs, but released a fact-sheet with more details of the trade deal.
It includes a commitment from Korean Air to purchase 103 new Boeing aircraft for $36.2 billion, a move that is expected to support up to 135,000 jobs in the U.S. The Republican of Korea Air Force will invest $2.3 billion to develop its aircraft with an American technology company.
Plus, the White House said it has secured key investments that solidify the United States as a global energy leader, including South Korean purchases of American liquid natural gas and a $3 billion investment in U.S. power-grid infrastructure.
Earlier on Wednesday, the South Korean president greeted Trump with flattery and gifts, including a replica of the ancient gold crown from the Silla dynasty. Their meeting was held in Gyeongju, South Korea, which was the capital of the ancient Silla Kingdom.
Trump was also awarded with the Grand Order of Mugunghwa, South Korea’s highest honor. Trump is the first U.S. president to receive the honor.
Former President Barack Obama addresses the Obama Foundation’s 2024 Democracy Forum on December 05, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. The 2024 Democracy Forum focused on “pluralism” and exploring how diverse communities can work together. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Barack Obama says he finds the murder of Charlie Kirk “horrific” and “a tragedy” and stressed that Americans must be able to disagree, push back against ideas they don’t ascribe to, while respecting the right of others to hold those opinions.
In remarks during a conversation with journalist Steve Scully at the Jefferson Educational Society in Pennsylvania Tuesday night, Obama also acknowledged that the shooting of Democratic Minnesota state legislators Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman were also a tragedy.
“Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, what happened to Charlie Kirk was horrific and a tragedy,” he said. “What happened … to the state legislators in Minnesota, that is horrific. It is a tragedy. And there are no ifs, ands or buts about it, the central premise of our democratic system is that we have to be able to disagree and have sometimes really contentious debates without resort to violence. And when it happens to some but even if you think they’re, quote, unquote, ‘on the other side of the argument,’ that’s a threat to all of us. And we have to be clear and forthright in condemning them.”
He continued: “And so, look, obviously I didn’t know Charlie Kirk. I was generally aware of some of his ideas. I think those ideas were wrong, but that doesn’t negate the fact that what happened was a tragedy and that I mourn for him and his family.”
Obama also praised Utah GOP Gov. Spencer Cox’s handling of the aftermath of Kirk’s murder.
“I’ve been very impressed with Governor Cox in Utah and how he’s approached some of these issues. I suspect Governor Cox and I disagree on a whole bunch of stuff. He is a Republican, self-professed conservative Republican, but in his response to this tragedy, as well as his history of how he engages with people who are political adversaries, he has shown, I think, that it is possible for us to disagree while abiding by a basic code of how we should engage in public debate.”
Obama also suggested that what he sees as the Trump administration’s desire to target political enemies is part of a larger issue, and stressed that when he served as president, he “wasn’t putting the weight of the United States government behind extremist views.”
“And so, when I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have a history of calling political opponents ‘vermin’, enemies who need to be ‘targeted,’ that speaks to a broader problem that we have right now and something that we’re going to have to grapple with, all of us. Whether we’re Democrats, Republicans, Independents, we have to recognize that on both sides, undoubtedly, there are people who are extremists and who say things that are contrary to what I believe are America’s core values,” he said.
“But I will say that those extreme views were not in my White House. I wasn’t embracing them. I wasn’t empowering them. I wasn’t putting the weight of the United States government behind extremist views. And that…when we have the weight of the United States government behind extremist views, we’ve got a problem,” said Obama.”
He said that the role of president is to unify — rather than stoke — division, saying, “But my view was that part of the role of the presidency is to constantly remind us of the ties that bind us together.”
“And I’m not alone in that belief,” he continued. “I think George W. Bush believed that. I believe that people who I ran against — I know John McCain believed it. I know Mitt Romney believed it. What I’m describing. Is not a Democratic value or Republican value. It is an American value. And I think at moments like this, when tensions are high, then part of the job of the president is to pull people together.”
Jason C. Andrew/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene escalated their feud over the weekend after the Georgia Republican slammed the president and the administration over a number of topics, including the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
Trump went so far as to withdraw his support for Greene and said he would support a primary challenger.
“Lightweight Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Brown (Green grass turns Brown when it begins to ROT!), betrayed the entire Republican Party when she turned Left,” Trump said in a social media post Saturday morning as part of an online back and forth with Greene.
Greene said Saturday in an X post that she had received death threats.
“As a Republican, who overwhelmingly votes for President Trump‘s bills and agenda, his aggression against me which also fuels the venomous nature of his radical internet trolls (many of whom are paid), this is completely shocking to everyone,” she said.
The conflict began this week after Greene questioned in an NBC News interview if Trump was focused on domestic affairs.
“No one cares about the foreign countries. No one cares about the never-ending amount of foreign leaders coming to the White House every single week,” she said in the interview.
On Friday, Trump responded to her words, telling reporters aboard Air Force One, “she is a very different figure,” and that he was no longer “a fan.”
“Something happened to her over the last period of a month or two where she changed. I think politically, I think that her constituents aren’t going to be happy,” he said. “But when she says, ‘Don’t go overseas.’ If I didn’t go overseas, we might be in a war right now with China.”
Trump added he would consider backing a primary challenger and in a social media post later in the night withdrew his endorsement of the congresswoman.
He wrote, “all I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN.”
“I understand that wonderful, Conservative people are thinking about primarying Marjorie in her District of Georgia, that they too are fed up with her and her antics and, if the right person runs, they will have my Complete and Unyielding Support,” the president added.
Greene pushed back against Trump Friday night in an X post, contending that the president was upset with her after she texted him about the ongoing Epstein investigation.
“And of course he’s coming after me hard to make an example to scare all the other Republicans before next weeks vote to release the Epstein files,” she said. “It’s astonishing really how hard he’s fighting to stop the Epstein files from coming out that he actually goes to this level.”
“I never thought that fighting to release the Epstein files, defending women who were victims of rape, and fighting to expose the web of rich powerful elites would have caused this, but here we are,” Greene said in an X post Saturday morning “And it truly speaks for itself.”
The president, who spent Saturday morning golfing in Florida, slammed Greene in a social media post arguing she, “became the RINO that we all know she always was. Just another Fake politician.”
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. government shut down at midnight on Wednesday, beginning funding stoppages that are expected to ripple through federal agencies, disrupting many government services and putting perhaps tens of thousands out of work.
The closure came amid an bitter impasse between congressional Democrats and Republicans, who are backed by President Donald Trump, over whether an extension of federal funding should include health care provisions.
The Senate late on Tuesday rejected in a 55-45 vote a 7-week stopgap funding measure supported by Republicans that would have allowed the government to continue operations. That was their second attempt of the night, after voting on a bill supported by Democrats. Hours later, the shutdown began.
As the government closed, rhetoric became heightened from both sides of the aisle, with each party and their allies pointing the blame at their counterparts — each claiming the opposing party “owns” the shutdown.
“Democrats have officially voted to CLOSE the government,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, said on social media, following the Senate vote.
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said the shutdown amounted to “the clearest sign yet that Republicans are inept, incompetent, and lack any respect for the American people.”
Democrats mostly hung together to deny the votes necessary to keep the government funded as they continue to say that any funding solution must include health care related provisions. Several Democrats crossed party lines and voted in favor of the clean-funding bill.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, said after the vote and prior to the shutdown that Democrats wanted to “sit down and negotiate, but the Republicans can’t do it in their partisan way, where they just say it’s our way or the highway.”
“It’s the Republicans who will be driving us straight towards a shutdown tonight, and at midnight, the American people will blame them for bringing the Federal Government to a halt,” he added.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris in social media post said, “Republicans are in charge of the White House, House, and Senate. This is their shutdown.”
Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters meanwhile pointed the blame at Democrats, saying they were “solely responsible” for the shutdown.
“Democrats are holding up critical funding for our veterans, seniors, law enforcement, and working families because they want to pass a far-left wish list costing more than $1 trillion,” he said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the committee, Sonali Patel, echoed Gruters, saying the Democrats in the Senate “caved to the far-left, played partisan politics, and forced this shutdown.”
“They own it,” Patel said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said at a press conference after Tuesday’s failed votes that Republicans are now in the hunt for a few additional Democrats to support their clean, short term funding bill after three Democrats defected during tonight’s vote.
Sens. John Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto and Angus King — an independent who caucuses with Democrats — had bucked their party leader and voted with Republicans on a short-term funding bill aimed at keeping the government open for 7 more weeks.
Thune said he intends to bring that bill forward for a vote again tomorrow. And he believes more Democrats might be willing to support it.
“There are others out there, I think who don’t want to shut down the govt but who are being put in a position by their leadership that should make them, ought to make all of them very uncomfortable,” Thune said.
He added, “So we’ll see. I think that tonight was evidence that there was some movement there and will allow our democrat colleagues to have additional opportunities to vote on whether or not to keep the government open, or in the case of tomorrow now probably to open it back up.”
