▲ This combined file photo, released by AFP, shows Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump. (Yonhap)
▲ This photo, released by Reuters, shows U.S. citizens marking their ballots at an early voting site in Greensboro, North Carolina on Oct. 22, 2024. (Yonhap)
▲ Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in a town hall presented by Spanish-language network Univision in Doral, Florida on Oct. 16, 2024 in this photo released by Reuters. (Yonhap)
▲ Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a CNN town hall in Aston, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 23, 2024 in this photo released by the Associated Press. (Yonhap)

(News Focus) US election-policy forecast

(News Focus) As U.S. election nears, Harris, Trump policy visions come into renewed focus

By Song Sang-ho

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 (Yonhap) -- With the U.S. presidential election just 10 days away, global attention is turning to outlooks for America's post-election foreign policy that would affect its alliance with South Korea, approach to an intransigent North Korea and strategic competition with China to name a few.

Uncertainty still shrouds the high-stakes race for the White House as Democratic standard-bearer Kamala Harris and her Republican rival Donald Trump are caught in a dead heat, with various polls showing thin margins in the overall swing state contest that will likely determine the outcome of the Nov. 5 general election.

To occupy the Oval Office, a candidate must win at least 270 electoral votes out of the total 538 electors representing the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Seven battleground states -- Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina -- are expected to play an outsize role in hitting that magic number.

It remains uncertain when a winner will be named. In the 2020 election that proceeded amid COVID-19, President Joe Biden's victory was announced four days after the vote. But the 2016 election was called for Trump in the wee hours of the morning after Election Day.

South Korea has been keenly watching developments in the White House race as a new U.S. president could bring a policy shift at a time when it seeks to align more closely with Washington amid North Korea's evolving nuclear and missile threats and its deepening military partnership with Russia.

Harris, 60, and Trump, 78, are seen envisioning divergent policy approaches in many respects, like their stark contrasts in terms of age, gender, race, policy inclinations and political inclinations.

The vice president has vowed to firm up America's global leadership if elected, raising expectations that she may forge ahead with a key tenet of Biden's foreign policy that centers on cementing a network of U.S. allies and partners to confront shared challenges, including North Korean threats and Russia's protracted war in Ukraine.

"I will make sure that we lead the world into the future, that America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century, and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership," she said in her speech accepting her party's presidential nomination in August.

In a recent post on X, Harris stressed, "The president of the United States must not look at the world through the narrow lens of ideology, petty partisanship, or as an instrument for their own ambitions."

In line with this view, the Democratic flag-bearer is expected to pursue sturdier multilateral security cooperation through trilateral or other fit-for-purpose platforms, such as tripartite cooperation with Seoul and Tokyo, and the Quad grouping involving the U.S., India, Japan and Australia.

Trump has been hammering away at his "America first" policy vision, which critics have warned would heap pressure on U.S. allies and partners to do more to address shared challenges while limiting America's costly, burdensome involvement overseas.

His vision has stoked concerns that America could shift to an inward-looking, "isolationist" policy approach. During Trump's presidency, the U.S. withdrew from various global institutions, including the Paris Climate Agreement, the then Trans-Pacific Partnership and UNESCO.

But Trump could selectively seek cost-effective multilateral engagements with U.S. allies and partners, like trilateral security cooperation with South Korea and Japan, observers said.

The former president's emphasis on burden sharing has been fueling concerns that he could demand renegotiation of a recent defense cost-sharing deal with South Korea, called the Special Measures Agreement (SMA), should he return to office.

Seoul and Washington concluded the SMA negotiations this month -- earlier than usual -- as concerns have persisted that Trump, if reelected, could call for a hefty increase in Seoul's share of the cost for stationing the 28,500-strong U.S. Forces Korea.

Under the deal, Seoul is to pay 1.52 trillion won (US$1.14 billion) in 2026, up from 1.4 trillion won in 2025. But Trump said recently that if he was in the White House, South Korea would be paying $10 billion a year under a defense cost-sharing deal, while calling South Korea a "money machine."

On North Korea's nuclear quandary, Harris is expected to stress cooperation with Seoul and Tokyo and double down on efforts to beef up deterrence against evolving North Korean threats while leaving open the door for diplomacy with the recalcitrant regime.

During her nomination speech in August, she said she will not "cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un who are rooting for Trump" -- remarks that indicated that if elected, she would carry out a conventional diplomatic approach rather than seeking direct diplomacy with the North Korean ruler.

At a campaign rally later, Trump hit back, saying that "getting along" with Kim is a "good thing" -- a statement that raised the likelihood of the former president reviving his personal diplomacy toward Pyongyang if reelected.

During his time in office, Trump employed a direct leader-to-leader approach to the North, leading to three high-profile 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.

At the Hanoi summit, the North Korean leader offered to dismantle the mainstay Yongbyon nuclear complex, but Trump apparently wanted more concessions as the U.S. saw the complex as only a part of the North's sprawling nuclear program.

On the economic front, Harris has been pitching her drive for an "opportunity economy" aimed at strengthening America's middle-class and supporting small businesses as she has vowed to chart a "new way forward" to a future where "everyone has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead."

Her economic policy proposals include a child tax credit worth up to $6,000 in total tax relief for families with newborn children and the expansion of the earned income tax credit as she has been seeking to court middle-class and low-income households.

However, Trump's focus has been on raising tariffs and reducing corporate taxes for companies that manufacture their products in the U.S. as he has been eyeing "manufacturing renaissance" under his "new American industrialism." His stance is expected to affect South Korean firms doing business with America.

"Vote for Trump, and you will see a mass exodus of manufacturing from China to Pennsylvania, from Korea to North Carolina, from Germany to right here in Georgia," he said in a campaign speech last month. "They're going to come to Georgia from Germany and other places."

Trump has said he might slap tariffs of up to 20 percent on all U.S. imports while proposing a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods. He also suggested he might impose a tariff of 100 percent or more on every car coming across the Mexican border.

Whoever is inaugurated as president in January next year, the Sino-U.S. relationship is expected to be tense as the two superpowers' strategic competition continues to intensify over a wide range of issues, including maritime security and technological leadership.

According to the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-headquartered think tank, Trump mainly sees U.S.-China relations through the "lens of trade" and appears committed to accelerating economic decoupling between Washington and Beijing.

"His first administration and his campaign statements underscore a fundamentally transactional mindset, whereby he subordinates most other objectives -- strengthening U.S. alliances and partnerships in Asia and improving human rights conditions inside China, for example -- to that of creating what he sees as a more balanced economic relationship with Beijing," the think tank said in a report released on its website this month.

Noting Harris' background as a child of civil rights advocates and as a practicing lawyer, the Crisis Group said that her background may provide ample fodder for bilateral frictions, though she also has a "pragmatic streak."

The think tank also expected that Harris, if elected, could build on the Biden administration's policy legacy, including the approach to "invest in U.S. capacity at home, align with allies and partners and compete with Beijing where warranted."

(END)

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