内容摘要：United States President Donald Trump has bid goodbye to Elon Musk at a White House event marking the billionaire’s

United States President Donald Trump has bid goodbye to Elon Musk at a White House event marking the billionaire’s

Lee of the Democratic Party has promised to ease tensions if elected, including by restoring a military hotline, and committed to maintaining the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula.Kim, however, has backed Yoon’s hardline approach, promising to secure “pre-emptive deterrence” through tools such as ballistic missiles and the redeployment of US tactical nuclear weapons. He has said he would also seek a path for the country to pursue nuclear armament by securing the right to reprocess nuclear fuel, a key step towards building atomic weapons.

The two candidates also differ in their approach to the US, the country’s most important security ally, and to China, its biggest trading partner.Lee, who espouses what he calls a pragmatic foreign policy, has said it is crucial to maintain South Korea’s alliance with the US and pursue security cooperation with Japan. However, he has pledged to prioritise “national interests” and said there’s “no need to unnecessarily antagonise China or Russia”.Kim, meanwhile, has questioned Lee’s commitment to the US-South Korea alliance, and has promised to hold an immediate summit meeting with US President Donald Trump if elected to discuss tariffs.

“I have a very friendly and trusting relationship,” with the US leader, Kim has said.He has also indicated a willingness to discuss sharing more of the cost of stationing US troops in the country, something Trump has demanded for years.

Lee Sung-yoon, board member of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, described the policy differences between the rival camps as “immutable” and referred to earlier comments by the Democratic Party’s Lee, because of which some view him as being soft on China and Russia.

“In the past, Lee has said South Korea should not get involved in China’s posture towards Taiwan, and just say thank you to both Beijing and Taiwan and stay out of the conflict. He has said of the trilateral defensive drills among US, Japan and South Korea as ‘a defence disaster’ and an ‘extremely pro-Japanese act’. And more than once he has said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy incited Russia to invade because he was a political novice who said unfortunate things.”According to estimates by Brugel, the value of all imported goods fell by half in the first four months after the invasion compared with the four months prior.

But since then, imports have made up much of that lost ground. For all of 2022, imports fell by only 8 percent, according to Russia’s central bank, although independent researchers have estimated a sharper decline of 15-16 percent.In 2023, imports reached 99.7 percent of pre-war levels, according to the Russian central bank.

The Russian economy’s unexpected resilience has been due, in part, to alternative supply chains.In late March 2022, as the scale of the corporate exodus from Russia became clear, Moscow legalised parallel imports - the import of products without the permission of the trademark owner.