Under Trump and Biden, the US trade policy has veered away from its traditional approach, developed since World War II, from multilateralism to focusing primarily on national and unilateral concerns. At the center of this approach have been tensions with China. This includes a renewal of industrial policies, protectionism and, most importantly, reliance on national security, manifested by newer and unexpected geopolitical developments. The discussion of trade policy today has become very toxic, especially during this presidential campaign season, with its renewed focus on tariffs. The trade debate in the US is now entering a new stage with the nomination of Kamala Harris and J.D. Vance. I believe the US drift away from the postwar policies of promoting global trade and investment will continue. Nationalist and protectionist policies will continue as part of a new economic and industrial policy, fused with national security concerns and rhetoric, no matter who wins.

The paper aims to test long-term and short-term causality from four exchange rates, the Korean won/$US, the Korean won/Euro, the Korean won/Japanese yen, and the Korean won/Chinese yuan, to the Korea Composite Stock Price Index in the presence of several macroeconomic variables using monthly data from January 1986 to June 2018. The results of Johansen cointegration tests show that there exists at least one cointegrating equation, which indicates that long-run causality from an exchange rate to the Korean stock market will exist. The results of vector error correction estimates show that: for long-term causality, the coefficient of the error correction term is significant with a negative sign, that is, long-term causality from exchange rates to the Korean stock market is observed. For short-term causality, the coefficient of the Japanese yen exchange rate is significant with a positive sign, that is, short-term causality from the Japanese yen exchange rate to the Korean stock market is observed. The coefficient of the financial crises i.e. 1997-1999 Asian financial crisis and 2007- 2008 global financial crisis on the endogenous variables in the model and the Korean economy is significant. The result indicates that the financial crises have considerably affected the Korean economy, especially a negative effect on money supply.