Trump vows to tank $15B buyout of US Steel by Japan’s Nippon

[Simone Del Rosario]

President-Elect Donald Trump is doubling down on his campaign promise to block a $15 billion deal between Japan’s Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel.

Donald Trump:

I will stop Japan from buying United States Steel. We have a foreign country that wants to purchase one of our greatest.

Simone Del Rosario:

Trump took to Truth Social to say he’s “totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company.”

Trump has previously touched on U.S. Steel’s legacy while campaigning in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, U.S. Steel’s home.

Donald Trump:

If you go back 70 years. Our greatest country, our greatest company by far, was United States Steel Corporation. That was the big deal. And now we have Japan buying it.

Simone Del Rosario:

The United Steelworkers union generally agrees with Trump that the deal should be blocked.

“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.

But The New York Times says there’s more to the union’s opposition, reporting they were upset Nippon didn’t consult union leaders during negotiations. But 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.

While Trump found an ally in organized labor, his former Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed claiming opposition to the deal is rooted in xenophobia. An important caveat: he wrote it in January, when it was President Joe Biden who was against the deal.

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Towns like ours, Restaurants like this one, All depend on the plants running. Nippon has committed $1 billion in upgrades to Mon Valley alone.

Simone Del Rosario:

Executives with U.S. Steel say it needs the Nippon investment to deal with global steel market changes. They also claim it will reduce the need for job cuts.

David Burritt:

Well 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 strengthens national security, strengthens economic security, strengthens job security. 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

Simone Del Rosario:

Meanwhile, Trump said he would bolster steel in his favorite way.

“Through a series of Tax Incentives and Tariffs, we will make U.S. Steel Strong and Great Again, and it will happen FAST! “

Blocking the deal on national security grounds is one possibility, one Biden has also entertained. But executives point out Japan is one of America’s greatest allies.

David Burritt:

you think about our country and and Japan, our best ally in the Asian theater. We trust them. We trust them with the greatest technology related to military equipment, naval technology, the Patriot missile, the F 35 each of these different things. And yet we don’t trust them to actually invest in our country, in our company, and create this value.

Despite Trump’s promise to block the buy, he may not get the pleasure.

The Biden administration was poised to block it back in September. But they 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 (SIFF-ee-yuhs) investigation is set to be done by December 23rd and Biden would have 15 days to announce a decision.