Dan Sullivan claims Korea must pay $54 billion for gas pipeline or else

Sen. Dan Sullivan has swallowed the fantasy that Donald Trump has the power to order South Korea to cough up $54 billion for the Alaska gas pipeline.

Sullivan told reporters Monday night that the final decision is up to Trump under the agreement Korea signed with Trump a year ago. Korea has appropriated the money and it has to pay for the pipeline or face retaliation by Trump, according to Sullivan’s view of world politics.

What’s next? Venezula will pay for the Arc de Trump. Canada will pay for the ballroom. Mexico will pay for the wall.

Sullivan’s pipeline plan is a political recipe for failure.

It was Sullivan who said last week that Korea had approved the $54 billion and the project had now crossed the “finish line” because of the great negotiator in the White House.

His new claim is that the project will be across the finish line when the South Koreans realize that Trump has the upper hand and has the ability to order Korea to obey.

For more than a year the likes of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have boasted that Trump’s trade deals have given him the ability to demand that Japan and/or Korea pay for the Alaska LNG project.

Lutnick, a wheeler-dealer who visited Epstein’s Island, is now described by retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis as “nuttier than squirrel shit.”

A year ago the nutty cabinet secretary told Bloomberg News that the Japanese had given Trump $550 billion to spend in any way that Trump wanted, to get a 15 percent tariff instead of 25 percent, and that the Alaska LNG project was on the way.

“There’s just no way they’re going to not fund these projects. And Donald Trump is going to deliver to the American people,” said Lutnick.

“Alaska pipeline, scale, $50 billion, $100 billion, Donald Trump wants to unleash the Alaska pipelines. The Japanese will finance it. And it’s great for America. It’s fantastic,” Lutnick said on September 5, 2025.

Trump has repeatedly lied that there is a Japanese joint venture to build the Alaska LNG pipeline. He has also lied that Japan and Korea want to invest “trillions of dollars each” for an Alaska LNG project.

In April 2025, Trump lied that South Korea was in a joint venture for the pipeline.

Despite the claims of the Trump and his band of Yes Men, Japan said no and Korea balked, with its leaders saying they will not invest in any project unless they decide it is a solid investment. They doubt the Alaska project meets that standard.

“Commercial viability is limited to projects capable of generating cash flow, so under our criteria, the Alaska gas field does not easily qualify,” the Korean trade minister said last November.

The more that reports circulate in Japan and Korea that Trump will dictate investment terms, the more likely it is that the Alaska LNG deal will not take place and the clock on the Trump presidency will run out as those nations demand study after study after study.

But Sullivan is now hyping the same line taken by Lutnick, that Trump holds all the cards.

Here is how Sullivan described it to reporters during Vance’s visit:

“Remember the Trump administration negotiated a trade agreement with Korea. That’s happened. Part of that trade agreement—lowering tariffs—part of that trade agreement was a $350 billion investment fund from the Koreans to invest in the United States.

“$150 billion of that’s going to shipbuilding, commercial and Navy. And the other $200 billion was for special projects focus on energy. The Korean government has already appropriated and passed that. Their legislature has passed that.

“What happened last Wednesday in the White House with the president and a lot of his cabinet and a number of us, was that again under this agreement there’s a joint investment committee that chooses the projects. The president finally approves them. The joint investment committee chose these projects, including the Alaska LNG project.”

“The president finalized the selection and so that was the announcement. That’s all been. That’s all money that’s already been appropriated. What, to the vice president’s point, what was going on a little bit is you can imagine in Korea there’s some politics around that vote, around that um big investment fund. And you saw a little bit of the politics the next day with the minister saying, ‘Well, we’re not sure we’ve agreed here.’ Or this number, it was about plus $50 billion. But that’s just being negotiated as we speak. And it’s part of the complications of a big deal. But what’s different is the money.”

“And I’ll tell you the other thing that’s different, especially from the Alaska perspective. This is now a priority of the federal government. That’s the first time ever. The president of the United States in the Oval Office saying this is the project, this is the funding and we’re gonna build it according to the trade agreement that they negotiated with the Koreans. So stay tuned. There’s still a lot of back and forth on the negotiations, on the structure. But that’s the main difference. There’s funding. And it’s from the president and his cabinet. This is now a federal focus project and that’s very different from the opportunities we’ve ever had before,” said Sullivan.

Sullivan is wrong on the key points.

Korea did not appropriate $54 billion for the Alaska project. It has not approved paying for the Alaska LNG project. The inclusion of the Alaska LNG project in a memo did not equate to a $54 billion check.

Trump’s position to demand obedience, both in the U.S. and beyond, is getting weaker as the end of his term approaches.

Korea’s top officials have agreed to start work on Alaska LNG with the U.S. “subject to meeting commercial reasonableness,” and following all “legal requirements” in both countries, two key phrases that have escaped Sullivan’s attention. These matters will not be resolved quickly.

During his short stop in Alaska, Vance was also trying to portray Trump’s strong-arm tactics as reasonable, claiming that Korea or Japan will eventually see the light and pay for the pipeline. The U.S. needs help paying for the pipeline, he said, and higher tariffs will be charged to American consumers if the deal with Korea or Japan is not completed.

The pipeline will get built “whether the current government or the next government of South Korea, or frankly whether we have to work with the Japanese and other nations to get it done. Because look people are desperate for the gas that comes out of the state. It’s cheaper, it’s higher quality. It’s more reliable because it’s coming from Alaska as opposed to some, some tinpot dictatorship,” Vance claimed.

Trump is desperate. Vance is desperate. Sullivan is desperate. South Korea is not desperate for Alaska LNG.

There has been reporting that one reason the tinpot president cut back joint military exercises in August with South Korea was to punish that nation for not investing billions in the U.S. He has since threatened South Korea with higher tariffs if it does not provide the $54 billion for the Alaska pipeline.

One of the things that Vance claimed in his book “Hillbilly Elegy” was that many of the people who grew up around him were afflicted with “learned helplessness” and had no confidence in their ability to make things happen and change their lives.

Vance, who knows nothing about Alaska, repeated this bit of jargon about the gas pipeline. He claimed that many Alaskans have learned to be helpless when it comes to the gas line.

He said many people “I think will almost have a sense of learned helplessness” about why the gas pipeline has never been built after all these decades.

Learned helplessness is Sullivan claiming that Alaska has a president who can blackmail a foreign country or two to come up with tens of billions of dollars for our benefit and create a lasting and trusting business partnership that will last for decades.

The notion that this is the way to get a pipeline built gets dumber by the day.

Your contributions help support independent analysis and political commentary by Alaska reporter and author Dermot Cole. Thank you for reading and for your support. Either click here to use PayPal or send checks to: Dermot Cole, Box 10673, Fairbanks, AK 99710-0673.