S. Korea's exports hold

[Anchor]

There were significant concerns about our exports due to the tariff bomb from the United States.

Fortunately, the performance in the first half of the year was better than expected.

However, with exports to the U.S. and China both decreasing, the outlook for exports in the second half is not very bright.

This is reporter Lee Do-yoon's report.

[Report]

Our trade performance for the first half of this year.

Exports reached 334.7 billion dollars, a decrease of 0.03% compared to the first half of last year, marking the third highest performance ever.

With a decrease in imports, the trade balance is at its best since the first half of 2018.

Considering the tariff storm from the U.S., the government assessed that it performed well.

[Seo Ga-ram/Director of Trade Policy, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy: "We recorded around a 0.03% decrease, which is quite a good performance…."]

The strong export performance was driven by semiconductors.

The export amount in the first half was the highest ever.

With prices of memory products on the rise, demand for high-value products like high-bandwidth memory (HBM) was solid.

However, exports to our major trading partners, the U.S. and China, decreased simultaneously.

This is due to the impact of U.S. tariffs.

The 25% tariff led to a more than 16% drop in automobile exports to the U.S., and exports of general machinery also decreased by a similar level.

In the case of exports to China, we could not avoid the "domino effect" where China's decrease in exports to the U.S. affected our companies as well.

The outlook for exports in the second half is also not bright.

[Seo Ga-ram/Director of Trade Policy, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy: "We expect that uncertain situations will continue, so the conditions will be very difficult…."]

The results of tariff negotiations with the U.S. are expected to significantly influence exports in the second half.

[Jang Sang-sik/Director of Trade and Economic Research Institute, Korea International Trade Association: "In the second half, the U.S. tariffs will be fully implemented, and the U.S. economy is also expected to worsen, so the export environment in the second half will likely deteriorate further…."]

Regarding the 'good performance' in the first half, there are opinions that it was due to an increase in local import demand in the U.S. before the reciprocal tariffs were fully implemented.

This is KBS News, Lee Do-yoon.