Trump Scores His First Revised Trade Deal, With South Korea

“President Donald Trump secured his first revamp of a U.S. trade deal, after reaching an agreement this week with South Korea that would allow American automakers greater access to that country’s markets,” Toluse Olorunnipa and Andrew Mayeda report in Bloomberg. “Seoul has agreed to double to 50,000 the number of cars each U.S. automaker can sell in the Asian nation without meeting local safety standards.”

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The Boston Herald Editorial Board writes that “President Trump has not been as soft on Russia as the media would have us believe. In fact, he has been tougher than most of his recent predecessors.” The editors argue that the President showed resolve this week when he “expelled 60 Russian diplomats in response to the early March attack on a former Russian spy in England.”

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In The Washington Times, Ilan Berman writes that President Trump has pledged “to continue holding the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the Iranian regime accountable for conducting cyber-attacks abroad and for suppressing Iranian citizens who are protesting the oppression of their government at home.” Berman notes that “the Trump administration has recognized that re-establishing America’s credibility and standing with the Iranian people ranks as one of its most urgent tasks.”

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“Poland signed the largest arms procurement deal in its history on Wednesday, agreeing with the United States to buy Raytheon Co’s Patriot missile defense system for $4.75 billion in a major step to modernize its forces against a bolder Russia,” Lidia Kelly reports in Reuters.

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“The U.S. economy grew at a solid 2.9 percent annual rate in the final three months of last year, a sharp upward revision that caps three quarters of the fastest growth in more than a decade,” Martin Crutsinger writes for The Associated Press. Crutsinger adds that “President Donald Trump often points to the pickup in growth last year as evidence that his economic program of tax cuts, deregulation and stronger enforcement of trade deals is already having a positive impact.”

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In the New York Daily News, Joe Borelli writes that “last Monday, when President Trump traveled to New Hampshire to roll out his administration’s opioid plan, he was right to put bullseyes on fentanyl, its traffickers and the countries where it is produced.” Borelli explains that the Trump Administration’s goal is to “fundamentally reduce the number of overdose deaths in the U.S., something which nearly every advocate, doctor and authority agrees has risen in conjunction with the availability of fentanyl.”