President Trump’s trade agreement with Japan, announced this week, has intensified pressure on South Korea to cut a deal that doesn’t leave it at a disadvantage relative to its biggest rival in East Asia.

Kim Jung-Kwan, South Korea’s industry minister, who arrived in Washington on Wednesday for negotiations, pledged an “all-out effort” to strike a deal by the Aug. 1 deadline to stave off a 25 percent tariff that the White House threatened in April and again this month.

Moving forward, Mr. Kim said he was taking a close look at the terms that Tokyo accepted. Mr. Trump agreed to a tariff rate of 15 percent. Japan vowed to buy more American cars and rice, as well as make more than $550 billion in investments at Mr. Trump’s direction.

The South Korean delegation will need to wait longer for clarity. A meeting planned for Friday with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, was canceled because of Mr. Bessent’s schedule and had yet to be rescheduled.

South Korea and Japan have similar powerhouse industries and trade relationships with the United States, and some of the sticking points are the same, including agriculture and automobiles.

South Korea has limited negotiating levers, because it already committed to drop most of its tariffs to zero in a 2007 trade agreement. Mr. Trump signed a minor revision to that pact in 2018, lifting caps on how many American cars could be exported to South Korea. Nevertheless, the American trade deficit with South Korea has increased every year since then, reaching $66 billion in 2024.