South Korea’s Lee meets with Trump, promising to ‘Make America Shipbuilding Great Again’

Hong Kong – One of the strongest allies in the United States in Asia, South Korea experienced a difficult start with President Donald Trump – in difficulty in pricing talks when he spent months without a permanent leader.

But its new president, Lee Jae-Myung, arrived for a meeting with Trump on Monday, praising an offer of $ 150 billion whose name is sure to call on the American leader: “Make America Shipbuilding again.”

The package, which South Korean officials also call Masga, includes the construction of new American shipyards, the training of naval construction personnel and the maintenance of American navy ships.

This is a key element in the last -minute trade agreement, southern South Korea last month with Trump, who says he wants to revitalize American shipbuilding for reasons of economic and national security. Trade and security will be raised on the agenda of its summit with Lee, which intervenes in the middle of increasing tensions with China and North Korea.

After decades of drop in industry, the United States now represents less than 1% of the World Naval Construction Sector, according to the Rand National Security reflection, against 50% for China, 30% for South Korea and 10% for Japan. South Korean equipment, conceptions and knowledge could help put the United States back on the map.

Tuesday, Lee and possibly Trump will visit a Philadelphia shipyard acquired last year by the South Korean group Hanwha.

The shipbuilding initiative is “a strategic and symbolic victory” for South Korea as well as for the United States, Eun A Jo, a postdoctoral purse at the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.

“I think it is an intelligent decision to try to guarantee an influence in a critical American sector, while contravening Chinese expansion in global maritime infrastructure,” she told NBC News during a telephone interview on Sunday.

No “Bromance” expected

The Summit of the White House is an important opportunity for Lee to defend the interests of South Korea with Trump after months of political instability created by the sloppy declaration of the martial law of former president Yoon Suk Yeol.

Although Lee comes from a liberal party, he and Trump share a lot in common – the two were the subjects of attempted assassination, and the two are more open to diplomacy with North Korea than their predecessors.

But they have very different perspectives on political, economic and foreign policy, which could make the summit difficult, said Bae Jong-Chan, president of Insight K, a private reflection group in Seoul.

“We will not be able to expect Bromance between President Lee and President Trump,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday.

The relationship has already been stretched by Trump’s prices on South Korea, the 10th world economy, which has a great trade surplus with the United States

Trump said last month that the American price on South Korean imports would be 15%, against the 25% he had threatened earlier. He said that South Korea, which does not impose any price on American products, has managed to “buy” the American rate by promising $ 450 billion in American investment and energy purchases, including the $ 150 billion naval fund.

Jo declared that Lee sought to lock the terms favorable to South Korea in the trade agreement, which remains unwritten and largely clear.

“I think he wants it to be firm and solid, that he has at least a certain feeling of predictability and stability in their economic relations,” she said.

More delicate are questions about the longtime security alliance of South Korea with the United States and its position on China.

Trump wants South Korea to assume more responsibility for its own defense, releasing the nearly 30,000 American soldiers stationed there to focus more on China, Washington’s largest strategic rival.

South Korea fears that such a change can leave it more exposed to the threats of North Korea, as well as to increase the chances it can be drawn into a potential conflict of American China on Taiwan, the island democracy of Beijing claims as a territory.

Although Lee strongly supports the alliance of American Korea from Korea from decades, he must also balance relations with China, the main trading partner in South Korea.

On Sunday, a special envoy told the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing that South Korea hopes to normalize relations with China after years of tension.

Lee has long been expressed about his reluctance to take sides between the United States and China, and his pragmatic approach to South China Korea relations “is unlikely to sit comfortably with President Trump,” said Bae.

Lee gives us his second stop

Before going to Washington, Lee stopped in Tokyo for a summit with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba during his first visit abroad since his elected president in June.

“It was a very deliberate and strategic decision,” said Jo, while the two American allies are looking for a lever effect to protect themselves from Trump vicissitudes.

On his flight from Tokyo to Washington on Sunday, Lee told journalists that he had asked Ishiba to the details of Japan negotiations with the United States and that Ishiba had given “a lot of very friendly advice”.

Lee and Ishiba, whose countries have always disagreed, have agreed at their summit to improve bilateral links so that they can better coordinate with the United States against China and North Korea.

Despite the interest of Washington and Seoul, North Korea rejected the idea of ​​new denuclearization talks, saying that Trump must accept it as a nuclear power. The Trump-Lee summit occurs while the American and South Korean soldiers organize annual joint exercises that North Korea condemns as rehearsal for the invasion.

Bae said Lee is “likely to move away from the summit with detailed duties” on North Korea, prices, the sharing of military costs and the role of American troops in South Korea, among other questions.

If he “fails to deliver as President Trump sees it in good luck,” Trump can protest by jumping economic cooperation in Asia-Pacific who meets South Korea this fall.

“Masga cannot cover everything for President Lee by dealing with President Trump,” said Bae.

Jennifer Jett reported Hong Kong and Stella Kim de Los Angeles.