Signal Korea and Chile agree to modernize FTA, restart joint trade committee after decade

Summary

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung and Chilean President José Antonio Kast agreed at a summit to pursue modernization and improvement of the Korea-Chile Free Trade Agreement. As part of this, the two countries decided to restart the Korea-Chile FTA Free Trade Committee for the first time in ten years, since 2016. The leaders also agreed to establish a new ministerial-level cooperation body focused on critical minerals supply chains, covering resources such as copper and lithium that are essential to secondary battery and advanced-industry supply chains. The move signals that critical-minerals supply-chain diversification is functioning as a substantive driver behind renewed FTA negotiations between the two countries.