Dan Drezner believes that the to-be-negotiated US-Korea FTA/PTA will have a big (beneficial) economic impact. I think we ought to see what’s on the negotiating table before making any judgments. As Drezner’s commenters note, the Koreans are fiercely attached to their agricultural protections.

The USTR press release stresses the size of Korea’s economy (the world’s tenth largest). But the relevant measure is the size of the protectionist distortions that liberalization will remove. Both the US and Korea have relatively low trade barriers, so we shouldn’t necessarily anticipate massive gains from liberalization between two large economies. There may be tariffs peak or barriers to investment, but it’s difficult to know how much progress will be made on those topics. For example, agriculture certainly remains well protected, but that sector is a sacred cow the negotiations are unlikely to touch.