On the 2nd (local time), U.S. President Donald Trump explained the reciprocal tariffs during an announcement event held at the White House Rose Garden, holding a panel indicating the tariff rates for each country. According to an attachment released by the White House following an executive order, it was identified that the reciprocal tariff rate for Korea was listed as 26% instead of 25%. On the 3rd (Korean time), the White House revealed the attachment content on their website immediately after President Trump’s speech and executive order signing, citing the tariff rate for Korea as 26%.
However, during the announcement, the panel presented by President Trump displayed the tariff rate for Korea as 25%, and the tariff rate table published by the White House through X (formerly Twitter) also marked Korea with 25%. It has been noted that the tariff rates for other countries also differed by 1 percentage point. For instance, the tariff rate for the Philippines was 17% during the Rose Garden announcement but was listed as 18% in the attachment, while India’s was marked as 26% during the announcement and 27% in the attachment.
Some have speculated that this discrepancy, consistently differing by 1 percentage point, might have resulted from a rounding error during the decimal calculation process. The Korean government is working to ascertain the accurate figures, but this is proving difficult due to the time difference as the U.S. is currently in the middle of the night.
Park Jong-won, the Deputy Minister for Trade, told reporters after attending a “Public-Private Joint Meeting on U.S. Tariff Measures” held at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, that “the U.S. side is being approached for verification of the exact reciprocal tariff rate,” highlighting the difficulty in prompt verification due to the U.S. time zone being late at night.