President Trump threatens South Korea with tariffs over LNG project — The Japan Times

US President Donald Trump has threatened South Korea with higher tariffs if it refuses to invest in a $54 billion liquefied natural gas export project in Alaska. This was reported by The Japan Times.

Seoul’s condition for investment

Earlier this week, Trump presented the LNG project as a key part of South Korea’s commitments to invest in the United States. At the same time, the South Korean government said it had agreed to participate only on the condition that the project is economically viable.

Commenting on Seoul’s position on Friday, Trump said that if it refused to participate, he would impose higher tariffs on South Korea. At the same time, according to the publication, it is unclear whether the US president has the authority to unilaterally raise tariffs on South Korean goods in response to such a decision: earlier this year, the US Supreme Court limited his tariff powers.

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Differences over the trade agreement

For several months, Washington and Seoul have been coordinating which projects will receive the hundreds of billions of dollars that South Korea committed to invest under a trade agreement with the United States last year. South Korean government representatives were not present when the LNG project was announced in the Oval Office on Wednesday. Instead, the event was attended by a representative of the private Glenfarne Group, which is developing the project.

Trump also said that the trade agreement with the United States provides $8.4 billion for a project to extract oil from an old field. According to the state news agency Yonhap, a representative of South Korea’s Ministry of Industry was surprised by this statement and noted that the agreement is limited to the provisions of a joint fact sheet that Seoul and Washington released in November 2025.