HONG KONG — One of the United States’ strongest allies in Asia, South Korea, has had a rough start with President Donald Trump — struggling in tariff talks as it spent months without a permanent leader.
But its new president, Lee Jae Myung, met with Trump on Monday touting a $150 billion offering whose name is sure to appeal to him: “Make America Shipbuilding Great Again.”
The package, which South Korean officials also refer to as MASGA, includes building U.S. shipyards, training shipbuilding personnel and maintaining U.S. Navy ships.
It’s a key part of the last-minute trade deal South Korea struck last month with Trump, who says he wants to revitalize U.S. shipbuilding for both economic and national security reasons. Trade and security were high on the agenda at his summit with Lee, which came amid growing tensions with China and North Korea.
A White House official said before the meeting that Trump “looks forward to hosting” Lee and that they would “discuss North Korea, defense posture, trade barriers, maritime security, American shipbuilding, energy dominance, and more.”
Trump himself injected a note of uncertainty into the day’s meeting Monday by posting on Truth Social: “WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOUTH KOREA? Seems like a Purge or Revolution. We can’t have that and do business there.”
It was not clear what Trump was referring to. Later, speaking to reporters at the White House during their meeting, Trump explained that he had “heard from Intel that there was a raid on churches. We’re going to talk about that later.”
After decades of industry decline, the United States now accounts for less than 1% of the global shipbuilding sector, according to the Rand national security think tank, compared with 50% for China, 30% for South Korea and 10% for Japan. South Korean equipment, designs and knowledge could help put the United States back on the map.
On Tuesday, Lee and possibly Trump will visit a Philadelphia shipyard acquired last year by the South Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group.
The shipbuilding initiative is “a strategic and symbolic win” for South Korea as well as the United States, said Eun A Jo, an assistant professor of government at William & Mary and director of its Asia Policy Lab.
“I think it’s a smart move to try and secure influence in a critical American sector while at the same time countering Chinese expansion in global maritime infrastructure,” she said in a phone interview Sunday.
No 'bromance' expected
The White House summit is an important opportunity for Lee to advocate South Korea’s interests with Trump after months of political instability created by former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s botched declaration of martial law.
Though Lee comes from a liberal party, he and Trump have much in common — both have been the subjects of assassination attempts, and both are more open to diplomacy with nuclear-armed North Korea than their predecessors.
But they have very different outlooks on political, economic and foreign policy, which could make the summit challenging, said Bae Jong-chan, president of Insight K, a private think tank in Seoul.
“One will not be able to expect bromance between President Lee and President Trump,” he said in a phone interview Monday.
The relationship has already been strained by Trump’s tariffs on South Korea, the world’s 10th-largest economy, which has a large trade surplus with the United States.
Trump said last month that the U.S. tariff on South Korean imports would be 15%, down from the 25% he had threatened earlier. He said South Korea, which does not impose any tariffs on U.S. goods, managed to “buy down” the U.S. tariff by promising $450 billion in U.S. investment and energy purchases, including the $150 billion shipbuilding fund.
Jo said Lee is seeking to lock in the terms favorable to South Korea in the trade deal, which remains unwritten and largely unclear.
“I think he wants that to be firm and solid, to have at least some sense of predictability and stability in their economic relations,” she said.
Trickier are questions about South Korea’s long-standing security alliance with the United States and its position on China.
Trump wants South Korea to take more responsibility for its own defense, freeing up the almost 30,000 U.S. service members stationed there to focus more on containing China, Washington’s biggest strategic rival.
South Korea worries that such a shift could expose it more to threats from North Korea, as well as increase the chances it could be drawn into a potential U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan, the island democracy Beijing claims as its territory.
Though Lee strongly supports the decades-old U.S.-South Korea alliance, he also has to balance relations with China, South Korea’s main trading partner.
On Sunday, a special envoy told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing that South Korea hopes to normalize relations with China after years of tension.
Lee has long been vocal about his reluctance to take sides between the United States and China, and his pragmatic approach to South Korea-China relations “is unlikely to sit comfortably with President Trump,” Bae said.
Lee makes U.S. his second stop
Before he headed to Washington, Lee stopped in Tokyo for a summit with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in his first foreign visit since he was elected president in June.
“That was a very deliberate and strategic move,” Jo said, as the two U.S. allies seek leverage to protect themselves from Trump’s vicissitudes.
On his flight from Tokyo to Washington on Sunday, Lee told reporters that he had asked Ishiba for details about Japan’s negotiations with the United States and that Ishiba had given “a lot of very friendly advice.”
Lee and Ishiba, whose countries have historically been at odds, agreed at their summit to improve bilateral ties so they can better coordinate with the United States against China and North Korea.
Despite interest from Washington and Seoul, North Korea has dismissed the idea of further denuclearization talks, saying Trump must accept it as a nuclear power. The United States and South Korean militaries are holding annual joint exercises that North Korea condemns as a rehearsal for invasion.
Bae said Lee is “likely to walk away from the summit with detailed homework” on North Korea, tariffs, military cost-sharing and the role of U.S. troops in South Korea, among other issues.
If he “fails to deliver as President Trump sees fit,” Trump may protest by skipping the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting South Korea is hosting this fall.
“MASGA cannot cover everything for President Lee in dealing with President Trump,” Bae said.
Jennifer Jett reported from Hong Kong and Stella Kim from Los Angeles.
