(IntraFish) Cheaper seafood products from the United States are expected to enter the South Korean market after the landmark beginning of the US-South Korea Free Trade Agreement last Thursday, reported The Wall Street Journal.
In Busan, South Korea's second-largest port city, several warehouses in a customs holding area were filled with frozen fish from the United States, ready for official entry on March 15 when a 10 percent tariff drops to zero.
Bori Inc. had about 100 metric tons of frozen flatfish ready to go through customs, a manager at the company said. "Another 10 companies are doing the same thing," the manager said. "I would guess there's about 2,000 metric tons ready to enter."
South Korea and the United States eliminated duties on thousands of goods on March 15 as part of a free-trade agreement that took one year to negotiate and an additional four years of political battling to complete.
The deal is the largest trade pact, by value of traded goods, the United States has completed since the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico in the mid-1990s.
About 80 percent of the existing tariffs between the two countries will be eliminated, while 95 percent of tariffs to be wiped out within five years.
Because South Korea's import tariffs were generally higher than the United States', the effect of the deal will likely be to reduce South Korea's surplus in trade with the United States, which amounted to $13.1 billion last year, but not eliminate it completely.