South Korea said it planned to intensify trade talks with the United States and considered U.S. President Donald Trump's plan for a 25% tariff from August 1 as effectively extending a grace period on implementing the duties.

The country’s new president, in office for a little over a month, had just dispatched his senior deputies to Washington to try to work out a trade deal.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that tariffs he plans to impose on South Korea are intended to “even out” what he described as an imbalance between trade and the cost of stationing U.S. troops on the peninsula.