Japan to invest $36 billion in US projects under trade pact, says Trump
The projects are the first investments under Japan’s $550 billion U.S. investment promise as part of Trump’s trade deal that reduced tariffs on Japanese imports to 15%, Trump said on Truth Social. He gave a few details about the projects. The $33 billion Portsmouth, Ohio power plant will be the largest natural gas-fired generating facility in U.S. history, producing 9.2 gigawatts of electricity annually, enough energy to power every home in Ohio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a statement.
The facility, which will be operated by SB Energy, a subsidiary of Japanese technology investor SoftBank Group, will increase baseload power at a time when demand for electricity from data centers built to power artificial intelligence applications is rapidly increasing.
Japan will invest in the $2.1 billion Texas GulfLink deepwater crude oil export facility off the coast of Texas, the White House said.
“This project is expected to generate $20-30 billion annually from U.S. crude exports, securing the export capacity of our refineries and strengthening America’s position as the world’s leading energy supplier,” Lutnick said. he said.
Texas GulfLink, developed by Sentinel Midstream, confirmed that it is part of the initiative and is “honored to be a trusted partner with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the government of Japan.” Trump said his Texas investments would include a liquefied natural gas project, but LNG was not mentioned in Lutnick’s statement and the White House briefing. The third major project in Georgia is a synthetic industrial diamond manufacturing facility that will meet 100% of U.S. demand for synthetic diamond grit, a critical input for advanced manufacturing and semiconductor production, Lutnick said. The US currently relies heavily on China for such supplies. A White House memo stated that the high-pressure synthetic diamond facility, worth approximately $600 million, will be operated by Element Six. The industrial diamond company is a unit of De Beers Group, the world’s largest diamond producer.
It was unclear how much of the project costs would be financed by Japanese organizations and under what conditions. Under an earlier US-Japan agreement, profits from the projects were to be split 50-50 between the US and Japan until Japan’s initial investment costs were recouped, after which profits were to be split 90-10 in favor of the US. Akazawa told reporters on Thursday that many issues remained unresolved before the agreements were announced.
“The scale of these projects is so large that they could not be accomplished without one very specific word: TARIFFS,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
