Will Trump now claim China will pay for Alaska LNG project?
Don’t be surprised if President Donald Trump begins claiming again that China might pay for the Golden Age of Alaska LNG project.
That doesn’t mean it will happen. It will be like the imaginary Trump phone, the Trump health care plan and the Trump golf championships.
Over the past year-and-a-half Trump and his supplicants have falsely claimed that Japan and Korea and Taiwan and Thailand would provide the money to build the pipeline.
Alaska’s leading Republican politicians have treated every bogus syllable as true.
The same thing will happen again. It’s as predictable as Trump falling asleep while his underlings stand behind him and pretend he is awake.
After meeting with President XI in Korea last fall, Trump said that China had joined the list of nations that wanted to pay for the LNG pipeline.
"In fact, a very large scale transaction may take place concerning the purchase of Oil and Gas from the Great State of Alaska. Chris Wright, Doug Burgum, and our respective Energy teams will be meeting to see if such an Energy Deal can be worked out," Trump said on his social media site last fall.
China’s imports of LNG ended in 2025 when it slapped a retaliatory tariff on U.S. imports as part of Trump’s tariff war.
As if on command, Sen. Dan Sullivan went on Bloomberg TV last October 30 to celebrate Trump’s genius and repeat his predictions that the pipeline was ready to go.
Sullivan claimed that Glenfarne would make a final investment decision on the LNG pipeline before the end of 2025. In early 2025, Sullivan said the company could be putting pipe in the ground by the end of 2025 or the start of 2026.
A year ago in April Dunleavy claimed to Fox Business that “we’ll be making some final decision investments, at least Glenfarne will, which is the outfit that is the private investor and lead in the project. Probably by August, September at the very latest, but it’s looking really good.”
But by the end of 2025, Dunleavy, Sullivan, Glenfarne and the rest began claiming that Glenfarne needed a 90 percent property tax cut from the 2026 Legislature before it could make a final investment decision.
No one has explained why this tax cut was never mentioned a year ago as a precondition.
Trump claimed repeatedly in 2025 that a joint venture had been established to build the Alaska LNG project.
After the October meeting with the Chinese president, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed to Fox News that the pipeline was already under construction.
He said Japan “will be part of a very large pipeline project that the U.S. is constructing in Alaska. The Koreans may be part of that. And President Xi unilaterally in the meeting today brought up that the Chinese might like to be part of it. So it’s energy dominance like we haven’t seen before in the U.S.,” Bessent said on October 30, 2025.
Sullivan said that same day that he was not surprised by the Chinese enthusiasm for the project, but warned that it might be too late because the Koreans, the Japanese and the others had already agreed to buy gas. (They were no binding agreements then or now.)
“The Alaska LNG project is making huge progress right now. And I think the big headline from the president’s trip wasn’t what Xi Jinping was asking about energy from Alaska. It was the progress that the Trump administration made in Japan, in Korea on our big LNG project,” Sullivan said last October.
“So with regard to China, get in line. There’s a lot of Asian countries that want American LNG from Alaska,” Sen. Dan Sullivan said. “It’s exciting. It’s strategic. It’s gonna help our country. It’s gonna help our allies. And it’s gonna help my state.”
China’s imports of LNG ended in 2025 when that nation slapped a steep tariff on shipments because of Trump’s tariff war.
Before jetting off to China for his meeting this week, Trump lavished praise on the Chinese tyrant, calling him a “tremendous guy.” Trump recounted his discombobulated scheme.
“We’ve offered that if he wants to send the ships to the US,” Trump said. “I made a statement: send your ships to Texas. It’s not that much further. Send your ships to Louisiana. Send your ships to Alaska. Alaska is actually very close to a lot of the Asian countries; people don’t realize it.”
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