Concerned Tokyo officials may have put a halt to Softbank’s (9984.T, SFTBY) fee of $6.3 billion from the flagship US-Japan $550 billion investment deal, according to people familiar with the matter.

The FT reports:

The fee would have been paid to billionaire Masayoshi Son’s company to build and operate a $33bn gas-fired power station in Ohio, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The power station is the first fruit of a trade deal that won Japan tariff relief from Washington in exchange for $550bn of investment in the US. Son has been central to the trade agreement since its conception, in part because of his closeness to Trump.

SoftBank’s final fee was cut by more than 90 per cent from the original proposal, according to several people familiar with the negotiations. It will earn the payments over 15 to 20 years if it can reach the target capacity of 9.2 gigawatts.

The idea of a fee arose because SoftBank would otherwise earn nothing for its role as developer of the project. It has no equity in the power station, which will be financed entirely by Japan and owned 50/50 by the US and Japan via a special-purpose vehicle, set up as part of the trade deal.

But the dispute over the amount reflects a fractious atmosphere in Tokyo, where officials fear Japan is getting edged out of selecting projects for the trade agreement and railroaded into backing companies that lack the necessary experience.

“Why do we have to pay a fee?” said one senior official in Tokyo. “They don’t have to put up any of the money.”