President-elect Donald Trump doubled down on a campaign promise Monday, Dec. 2. Trump said he would block a $15 billion deal between Japan’s Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel, but its fate could be sealed before he ascends to the Oval Office.
“I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, in this case Nippon Steel of Japan,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “As President, I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!”
While on the campaign trail in U.S. Steel’s home state of Pennsylvania, Trump talked about the importance of the company.
“If you go back 70 years, our greatest company by far was United States Steel Corporation. That was the big deal. And now we have Japan buying it,” he said in August.
The United Steelworkers union has generally been against the deal between the two steel manufacturers.
“The proposed sale is bad for workers, our communities and the domestic industry — as well as our national security, critical infrastructure and domestic supply chains,” the union said in a statement released Monday.
However, The New York Times reports there’s more to the union’s opposition. The newspaper claimed they were upset Nippon didn’t consult union leaders during negotiations. The Japanese steelmaker reportedly believed doing so could risk the deal getting leaked to a competitor in the bidding process. That competitor, Cleveland-Cliffs, has close ties to the union.
The president-elect may have found an ally in United Steelworkers, but his former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in January claiming opposition to the deal is rooted in xenophobia.
In the op-ed, he mentioned President Joe Biden, who had expressed concern about the deal at the time and later came out against it.
U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt contends the company needs Nippon’s investment to deal with changes in the global steel market. He also believes it will save jobs.
“If we were going to paint a picture of the best deal, this would be it because it checks all the boxes in terms of strengthening national security, strengthens economic security, strengthens job security,” Burritt told WTAE-TV Pittsburgh last month. “In fact, there’s opportunity to grow jobs as a result of the big investment. So you look at each one of those things; that’s thumbs-ups across the board.”
The president-elect has his own ideas of how to support the U.S. steel industry.
“Through a series of Tax Incentives and Tariffs, we will make U.S. Steel Strong and Great Again, and it will happen FAST!” he said on Truth Social.
The deal could be blocked on national security grounds, which Biden has entertained. But Burritt points out that Japan is one of America’s greatest allies and the two sides have shared a lot of technology.
Despite the promise from Trump, Biden could still beat him to the punch by stopping the deal. The White House was poised to block it in September but decided to allow Nippon to resubmit its filing with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which handles reviewing the deal.
The CFIUS investigation is set to conclude by Dec. 23 and Biden would then have 15 days to announce a decision.
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