The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released the "2026 National Trade Estimate Report (NTE)" on the 1st and identified the salt farm slavery issue as a Korean non-tariff trade barrier. The exclusion of foreign companies from artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure procurement and legislation regulating online platforms also came under scrutiny. The government said not all matters listed in the report are core U.S. issues and announced a plan to respond selectively.
What stands out in the report is the reference to solar salt from Taepyeong Salt Farm in Sinan, South Jeolla. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in April issued a Withhold Release Order (WRO), saying there is reasonable evidence of forced labor, and the USTR put it on the official list of trade barriers. It also noted that Korea lacks a law that itself bans the import of goods produced with forced labor, allowing the product to compete unfairly with normal corporations.
As the United States is also separately conducting a Section 301 investigation related to forced labor, there remains the possibility that it could lead to tangible sanctions such as retaliatory tariff.
The issue of AI infrastructure procurement also newly emerged. The Ministry of Science and ICT in May last year opened bidding for high-performance graphics processing unit (GPU) chips and cloud resources only to domestic operators, effectively blocking U.S. cloud service providers from participating. Restrictions on the use of U.S. corporations based on the National Intelligence Service's Cloud Security Certification (CSAP) and the Act on the Protection of National Core Technologies were also cited as non-tariff barriers.
Fairness issues related to online platform regulation were also raised. The report said, "The Korean government and the National Assembly are discussing a bill that would impose ex-ante regulatory obligations on digital service providers that meet global revenue thresholds," and added, "While many large U.S. platform corporations would be subject to the measure, some large Korean conglomerates are excluded."
A day earlier, Yeo Han-koo, head of the Office of the Minister for Trade at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources, said, "When U.S. corporations raise difficulties, there is a strong tendency for all of them to go into the NTE report," and noted, "Not everything is considered serious by the United States." He added, "It is important to make selective judgments through bilateral consultations." The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MOTI) plans to soon convene the Korea-U.S. FTA Joint Committee to finalize an implementation plan for non-tariff agreements.