The Trade Deal with South Korea

The trade deal that Team Trump negotiated with South Korea (see "Trump Secures Trade Deal With South Korea Ahead of Nuclear Talks," by Michael Shear and Alan Rappaport) appears to be a modest victory for the administration. South Korea agrees to a steel export quota and allows more U.S. automobiles to be shipped to its shores:

Through the agreement, South Korea — the third-biggest exporter of steel to the United States in 2016 — is permanently exempt from the White House’s global tariffs of 25 percent on steel. In return, South Korea agreed to adhere to a quota of 2.68 million tons of steel exports to the United States a year, which it said was roughly equivalent to 70 percent of its annual average sent to the United States from 2015 to 2017.

The deal also doubles the number of vehicles the United States can export to South Korea without meeting local safety requirements to 50,000 per manufacturer. However, trade experts said that American companies had not come close to meeting their existing quota last year, and that American carmakers had not done enough to tailor their products for South Korean consumers, who prefer smaller vehicles. The revised agreement does ease environmental regulations that American carmakers face when selling vehicles in South Korea and makes American standards for auto parts compliant with South Korean regulations.

Importantly for the Trump administration, the agreement extends tariffs on imported South Korean trucks by 20 years to 2041. Those tariffs were set to phase out in 2021, which officials said would have harmed American truck makers.

MAGA fans are proclaiming a new day. I've always thought that Trump's viability as a two-term president is pegged on his ability to deliver on trade. His hope for staying in the White House depends upon his success in renegotiating NAFTA and reaching some sort of amicable settlement with China.

But even this might not be enough. Suburban voters appear to have grown exhausted with the president.

Suburban voters have led this page to its two biggest blunders in the last several years: a confident prediction of Hillary's victory in 2016 (based on a belief in a fictitious gender gap) and a confident prediction of Republicans holding Pennsylvania's 18th CD (because a blue dog couldn't juice progressive turnout enough to overcome a 20-point GOP advantage in the 2016 presidential race).

Suburban voters, particularly suburban liberals, are considered free-traders. So Trump's goose might already be cooked.