President Joe Biden on Jan. 3 said no to Japan’s Nippon Steel buying out U.S. Steel, citing reasons of protecting national security. President-elect Donald Trump and the top leadership of the United Steelworkers (USW) union are in agreement with Biden.
But opposing Biden, Trump, and the USW head office are thousands of rank-and-file steelworkers and mill town mayors in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (U.S. Steel headquarters) and Gary, Indiana areas, and a few other U.S. Steel locations, who are desperate to save jobs and keep their communities alive. For decades, they have seen mills closed and their hometowns devastated. Several local mayors issued a joint letter last week urging the White House to just bargain for good terms and approve the Nippon takeover, in hopes their people can survive.
Nippon and U.S. Steel announced the intended sale in December 2023, for a sum of $14.9 billion. The proposal was then reviewed by the federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS), which in December announced it was deadlocked, and turned its files over to the White House. Biden had campaigned on the pledge he would not allow a foreign takeover of U.S. Steel. Trump states he will use tariffs and tax benefits to induce steel revival. These are warmed-over versions of the Washington rhetoric over the last 50 years, as the U.S. steel sector went down.
The volume of U.S. annual steel production has been in decline for years. It peaked in 1973 at the level of 110 million tons of raw steel, and now fluctuates in the range of 85 million. At the same time the use of steel in the economy is way below what would be required if the U.S. economy were in high gear, for example, building much-needed infrastructure—rail, pipelines, water management, bridges, etc.—and collaborating on projects abroad in Central and South America and Africa.
