NEW YORK — U.S. President Donald Trump described South Korea's investment in the United States as the price of lower tariffs and again pressed for swift execution.
Trump made the remarks on the 6th while speaking at Sparrows Point, a defense shipyard in Baltimore, Maryland, saying, "South Korea recently gave us $150 billion." He said the money "is a way for South Korea to lower the tariffs imposed on it, and all of it goes into shipbuilding," adding, "I told South Korea, which wants lower tariffs, that it has to pay the price to get them." He also said, "Hanwha, a South Korean company, is investing billions of dollars to revive a historic shipyard in Philadelphia," referring to the Philly Shipyard.
Trump's speech targeted MASGA, or Make American Shipbuilding Great Again, the $150 billion Korea-U.S. shipbuilding cooperation project that Seoul agreed with Washington last November. Of the $350 billion in total U.S. investment that South Korea has committed, the remaining $200 billion is to go into strategic industries. The two countries initially agreed to pursue construction of a combined-cycle gas power plant in Encinal, Texas, as the first project under the $200 billion investment. They also agreed to hold further talks on the construction of eight large nuclear reactors and on an Alaska liquefied natural gas project.
On the 2nd, however, Trump treated South Korea's investment in the $50 billion Alaska LNG project as a done deal, saying, "Tell them that if they don't reach an agreement soon, we will double the bill to South Korea." The remarks were intended to promote the effects of his tariff policy in Alaska, which has emerged as a battleground in the midterm elections on Nov. 3.
