Martial Arts: "Insufficient Japan Trade and Cooperation Activities... Need to Strengthen Public-Private Cooperation"

Martial Arts, Hosting the '2nd Global Trade Forum'

On the 9th, the Korea International Trade Association held the "2nd Global Trade Forum" at the Trade Tower in Samseong-dong to discuss strategic tasks and directions for promoting trade cooperation in response to the rapidly changing trade environment.

At the 2nd Global Trade Forum, Vice Chairman Jeong Manki is delivering the opening address.

Vice Chairman Jeong Manki pointed out in his opening remarks that "amid the weakening functions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) multilateral system, the global trade environment is rapidly changing due to major countries' moves to reorganize supply chains centered on their own countries for carbon neutrality and green transition." Legislation aimed at reorganizing supply chains centered on their own countries, such as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the European Union (EU) Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), the Carbon Neutral Industry Act, and the Battery Act, is being actively pursued.

Vice Chairman Jeong stated, "We need to participate in the supply chains established by the U.S. and EU through active local investment, and while diversifying supply chains to reduce excessive dependence on China for key battery minerals and rare earths, we must also consider China's importance as a huge export market." He added, "For us, this is a time when strategic trade and cooperation activities by both the government and the private sector are more necessary than ever."

In this regard, Cho Seongdae, Director of the Trade Support Center, emphasized the need for customized trade cooperation strategies to respond to the structural causes of the current complex trade environment and changes in the global trade structure. He presented a total of 27 countries and regions as key candidates for cooperation related to four trade cooperation directions: ▲establishing stable mineral resource supply chains, ▲securing sustainable export markets, ▲forming partnerships with global leaders reflecting national interests in international norms, and ▲linking international development cooperation with business opportunities.

Park Seonkyung, Director of the International Cooperation Office, pointed out that an analysis of the Korean government's high-level trade and cooperation activities over the past decade (2013?2022) showed that high-level trade cooperation activities with Japan were low, occurring only once in the last ten years. He stated, "Although Japan is Korea's fourth largest export country and third largest import country, and is highly important in terms of trade and economic scale, high-level trade cooperation activities have been minimal over the past decade," and emphasized, "With the improvement of Korea-Japan relations, public-private cooperation activities need to be strengthened."

At the forum, in line with the recent increasing trend of Korean companies investing in the U.S., a presentation was also made on ways to maximize the investment benefits of Korean companies entering the U.S. market. Shin Woojin, an attorney at the U.S. law firm Nelson Mullins, in his presentation titled 'Selection of U.S. Investment Locations for Manufacturing Companies and Incentive Negotiation Strategies,' advised, "When entering the U.S., not only the scale of incentives but also contract terms related to incentive payment and return can affect company operations and value, so contract terms should be negotiated simultaneously with the U.S. government." He also noted that property tax reductions are authorized by local governments, not state governments, so negotiations with local governments are also important.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.