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Stranded LNG Assets, Sinking Ships
Trump’s tariffs torpedoed the second-largest market for U.S. LNG and may have accidentally slashed future emissions.
China has just suspended all LNG imports from the United States. No warning, no phasedown, just an apparent state directive that Chinese buyers, including the national oil companies, were no longer to sign, lift, or receive U.S. liquefied natural gas. The decision comes in the wake of a rapidly escalating trade war, reignited by a second Trump presidency that wasted no time imposing steep new tariffs on Chinese technology and industrial goods. The result is a gaping hole in the U.S. LNG export market, one that undermines years of investment assumptions and exposes the growing fragility of fossil fuel infrastructure in a changing geopolitical landscape.
The China–U.S. LNG relationship wasn’t always adversarial. In fact, over the past decade, it was one of the more dynamic components of global gas trade. After the U.S. began exporting LNG from the Lower 48 states in 2016, China quickly emerged as a top customer. That year, U.S. LNG shipments to China totaled roughly 0.35 million tonnes — small, but significant for a market just opening. By 2017, the figure had surged to over 2 million tonnes per annum (MTPA), with China accounting for nearly 15% of all U.S. LNG exports…
