(Official Washington Examiner editorial, Jan. 6) As soon as President-elect Donald Trump takes office, he should reverse President Joe Biden’s wrongheaded and arguably illegal decision to block the sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel of Japan.
Biden made the long-anticipated decision on Jan. 3, citing spurious “national security” concerns. During the presidential campaign, Trump also said he opposed the sale to Nippon Steel, but he should change his mind. It would save jobs and perhaps create new ones. Stopping the sale would probably mean the elimination of up to 11,000 jobs in Pennsylvania and would cost U.S. Steel shareholders some $4 billion, according to a widely cited report first obtained by the Washington Examiner last July.
Rather than protecting national security, preventing the sale would be more likely to harm it. Japan is a close, important, longtime ally and a crucial counterweight to the aggressive Chinese communist regime in Beijing. An alliance between Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel would be an economically good thing — a publicly traded Japanese company with plenty of American stockholders that invests in production and jobs here in the United States. It would be militarily and diplomatically wise to improve the industrial bases for both allied nations while China seeks to corner industrial markets and build an increasingly formidable Navy.
U.S. Steel, based in Pennsylvania, has been struggling for years. Thirteen months ago, Nippon Steel offered to buy it for $14.1 billion and invest another $1.4 billion or more into plant refurbishment while honoring all existing collective-bargaining agreements with U.S. Steel employees. By contrast, the Ohio-based Cleveland-Cliffs company offered barely half as much to buy U.S. Steel, and it is expected to shutter all or most operations in western Pennsylvania if it takes over. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorialized last year that without Nippon Steel’s purchase, “there is no long-term future for steelmaking in Pittsburgh,” and in September, thousands of Pennsylvania workers demonstrated in favor of Nippon Steel’s acquisition…..
