President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Japan would invest $36 billion in three energy and manufacturing projects in the United States, the first tranche of investments under the trade deal reached between the two countries last year.
Japan is set to provide the capital for a massive 9.2-gigawatt gas power plant in Ohio, a deepwater crude oil export terminal in Texas, and a Georgia plant producing synthetic industrial diamond grit, which is used in advanced manufacturing, the Commerce Department said.
“The scale of these projects are so large, and could not be done without one very special word, TARIFFS,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
The gas-fired power plant near Portsmouth, Ohio, will be developed by SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank, at a cost of $33 billion, according to an administration official. If constructed, it would represent the largest gas-fired power plant in the United States, dwarfing the current leader, Florida Power & Light’s West County Energy Center, which can produce up to 3.7 gigawatts of power.
