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CHINA and South Korea signed a free-trade deal yesterday to remove tariffs on more than 90 per cent of goods over two decades.
Trade ministers from the two countries met in Seoul to sign the pact between two of Asia’s biggest economies.
The agreement covers 22 areas including finance and online commerce. Though South Korea’s rice industry is not part of the pact, trade in 70 per cent of agricultural goods will be liberalised.
Friedrich Merz’s call for a new Plaza Accord ignores how Washington’s 1985 currency ambush destroyed Japan without fixing US deficits — China, a sovereign socialist state with 1.4 billion consumers, cannot be bullied the same way, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ
The cancelled China trip of the German Foreign Minister marks a break with Helmut Schmidt’s China policy and drives Germany further into Washington’s confrontation course, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN
US tariffs have had Von der Leyen bowing in submission, while comments from the former European Central Bank leader call for more European political integration and less individual state sovereignty. All this adds up to more pain and austerity ahead, argues NICK WRIGHT
