Seventeen months after their initial offer to purchase U.S. Steel, the tide may be turning for Nippon Steel. In a Truth Social post May 23, President Donald Trump announced that he would approve of a deal in which Tokyo-headquartered Nippon Steel will invest $14 billion in U.S. Steel and form a “partnership” with it that would keep its headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and reportedly require government-approved board members.
“This will be a planned partnership between United States Steel and Nippon Steel, which will create at least 70,000 jobs, and add $14 Billion Dollars to the U.S. Economy,” Trump wrote Friday, calling it the largest investment in Pennsylvania history and announcing a rally in Pittsburgh. The $14 billion in promised investments almost matches the $14.9 billion price tag US Steel accepted as a purchasing price from Nippon in December 2023.
Trump and his predecessor both initially opposed Nippon Steel’s attempt to buy U.S. Steel on national-security grounds: After Trump vocally opposed the deal in a speech, President Biden formally blocked the deal from going through in January 2024. The President’s pivot on the steel deal comes after he ordered a second review in April of the purchase by the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which recommended the deal go through.
New terms for the deal apparently include that a majority of U.S. Steel’s board members after the deal will be American citizens, and that three will be approved by CFIUS. In an interview with CNBC, Senator David McCormick of Pennsylvania said that U.S. Steel will also retain a U.S. CEO and will require government approval of some board members.
It’s unclear, though, if the “partnership” Trump refers to is the same as the wholesale purchase Nippon Steel had initially sought. On Sunday, May 26, Trump told reporters U.S. Steel would still be “controlled by the United States,” and that he was approving “an investment” and “a partial ownership.”
In a May 23 statement, U.S. Steel praised the President as “a bold leader and businessman who knows how to get the best deal for America, American workers, and American manufacturing.”
Anticipating Trump’s May 23 post, the United Steelworkers issued a statement May 22 criticizing it; David McCall, International President of the USW, called Nippon Steel “a serial trade cheater” with a history of dumping product and called the proposed U.S. Steel deal “a disaster.”
“It is simply absurd to think that we could ever entrust the future of one of our most vital industries — essential to both national defense and critical infrastructure — to a company whose unfair trade practices continue to this day,” McCall said.
Since U.S. Steel first put itself on offer, the USW has favored its purchase by a different steel company, Cleveland, Ohio-based Cleveland-Cliffs Co. In a novel use of its right to first refusal, the union initially attempted to preemptively veto purchase offers from any other company. At a January press conference, Cliffs CEO Laurenco Goncalvez stormed against Nippon’s offer and Japanese metal makers for allegedly “teaching China how to dump steel on the U.S. market.”
