The South Korean government is nearing the announcement of a major energy investment project in the U.S. to support America’s artificial-intelligence build-out, a long-awaited development of the trade deal struck between Washington and Seoul last year.
Another potential investment, at roughly $20 billion, is tied to a natural-gas power plant in Texas, which would power AI data centers, according to people familiar with the matter. After striking their trade pact with South Korea last October, Trump threatened to revive the 25% tariffs after months of inaction by South Korea’s legislature to approve the deal. In more than a dozen deals, trading partners such as South Korea, the European Union and Japan agreed with the U.S. to a mix of trade concessions, state-backed investment and market access in return for lower tariffs. South Korean lawmakers approved the pact in March.
The deal would hand Trump a splashy achievement from last year’s tariff blitz .
South Korea’s outlays, in any given year, are capped at $20 billion per the two countries’ agreement. The U.S. government has made an $80 billion federal push for new Westinghouse reactors, with some funds coming from the trade deal with Japan.
The first reactors would use American firm Westinghouse Electric’s AP1000 design , some of the people said. The South Korean government this year created a state-run corporation charged with evaluating potential U.S. investments for their commercial viability. A bilateral investment committee then reviews the projects, which would be financed by South Korean state funds, and makes recommendations to Trump. The investments are expected to unfold over a number of years. The precise timeline for the reactors’ construction and their locations haven’t been finalized. It is likely they will be built on land owned by the U.S. government. The U.S. has two AP1000s. But the two sides have discussed at least some of the reactors being built in the U.S. with APR1400 designs from a South Korean company, Kepco, they added. Both the Korean and U.S. reactors are large enough to power a city. Trump has been eager to jump-start construction of large and small reactors. About one-fifth of U.S. electricity comes from nuclear power, though reactor construction has slowed dramatically in recent decades.
