Lutnick Urges Tangible Results From Korea-U.S. Shipbuilding Pact

According to Yonhap, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Thursday the Korea-U.S. Shipbuilding Partnership Center in Washington should be judged by actual shipbuilding output, not by the number of meetings or memorandums of understanding, and pledged to help remove regulatory hurdles that South Korean companies may encounter in the United States. The center was opened to support the US$150 billion investment in the U.S. shipbuilding sector that Seoul committed under last year’s bilateral trade and investment deal. Lutnick said the Trump administration will assess the effort by the capital deployed, facilities modernized, workers trained, supply chains established and the number of domestically produced ships built, while also stressing that Washington wants to expand production of both military and commercial vessels in America.