After first agreeing with Biden, Trump to announce US Steel-Nippon deal

In a major reversal, President Donald Trump is slated to travel to Pennsylvania on Friday to announce a deal with Japan’s Nippon Steel that would give the U.S. government a controlling role in U.S. Steel under an emerging merger arrangement.

The deal Trump is expected to declare at U.S. Steel’s Irvin Works plant near Pittsburgh would install atop the new company an American CEO and a majority of board members from the United States — and hand the U.S. federal government final approval over key corporate decisions and functions.

Trump and his top trade and manufacturing advisers had insisted since he took office that any merger arrangement between Nippon and U.S. Steel would have to feature a controlling role for the U.S. government and American leadership atop the new company.

But the longtime businessman’s stance on the merger has evolved over time. In his 1987 book “The Art of the Deal,” Trump advised readers to avoid getting too attached to the terms of any one possible deal and to keep a lot of options on the table, because most proposed agreements fall apart.

President Joe Biden on Jan. 3 formally blocked Nippon’s attempt to acquire U.S. Steel after long opposing the proposed transaction, arguing that such a move would undermine national and economic security. As recently as December, while still president-elect, Trump was clear in his opposition, as well.

“As President, I will block this deal from happening,” Trump wrote on social media on Dec. 2, marking a rare agreement with Biden, adding: “Buyer Beware!!!”

But after taking office, Trump began to warm to the notion of a partnership that would leave final say over U.S. Steel’s business moves in American hands. He started touting Nippon’s proposal to invest at least $14 billion in U.S. Steel’s domestic operations as a win for his push to remake the United States into a “manufacturing superpower.”

Pennsylvania Sen. Dave McCormick this week described the U.S. government’s role in the new U.S. Steel as “a golden share.”

The agreement on the table would “essentially require U.S. government approval of a number of the board members and that will allow the United States to ensure production levels aren’t cut,” the Republican senator told CNBC.

McCormick, a Trump ally, estimated the Nippon deal would salvage up to 10,000 jobs in the Keystone State and add 10,000 to build and operate another arc furnace at a to-be-determined location.

Still, Japan’s Nippon would “have, certainly, members of the board and this will be part of their overall corporate structure,” said McCormick, who revealed that he and other lawmakers met with Trump late last week about the emerging pact, which the senator has described as a win-win for both sides.

“They wanted an opportunity to get access to the U.S. market — this allowed them to do so and get the economic benefit of that,” McCormick said, referring to Nippon. “They’ve negotiated it. It was their proposal.”

‘Vital American company’

Before his trip to the Pittsburgh-area steel facility was announced by his staff, Trump on Sunday tipped his hand.

Speaking to reporters while returning to the White House from a golf weekend at his New Jersey resort, Trump said the new U.S. Steel would be “controlled by the United States,” adding: “Otherwise, I wouldn’t make the deal.”

The president also provided his version of how the agreement with Nippon came together.

“I went to the unions, to … all of the local unions. They all wanted it. And I’m doing it because all of the congressmen came in, about five of them, and the others I understand are in conference, and they asked that I do it,” Trump said. “Everybody seems to want it. And we’ll see.”

“They’re going to invest billions of dollars in steel, and it’s a good company,” Trump said. “Nippon is a very good company. We’ll see. But it would be, it’s an investment and it’s a partial ownership, but it’ll be controlled by the USA.”

Biden spent his final weeks and months in office, in part, explaining why he opted to block the steel merger.

“It is my solemn responsibility as president to ensure that, now and long into the future, America has a strong domestically owned and operated steel industry that can continue to power our national sources of strength at home and abroad; and it is a fulfillment of that responsibility to block foreign ownership of this vital American company,” he said in a Jan. 3 statement.

But some conservative analysts called Biden’s decision a mistake, while urging the incoming president, Trump, to reverse it.

“Politics may stop at the water’s edge, but the effects of Biden’s decision to block this deal with be felt both domestically and internationally,” Zack Cooper, a former National Security Council staffer and now a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, wrote the day of Biden’s announcement. “This may not be his administration’s last major national security decision, but it is certainly one of its worst.

Cooper added presciently: “It is theoretically possible that US officials could eventually come to their senses.”

Trump’s visit to Pittsburgh will also place him in a battleground state he won in the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections. To that end, at several events since he defeated Kamala Harris in November, Trump has credited Pennsylvania as being one of the keys to his victory — especially after Biden had carried the state in the duo’s 2020 race.

“The president greatly looks forward to going to Pittsburgh, Pa.,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday, “where he will discuss this historic deal, and discuss American jobs and American steel.”