Op-Ed: Nippon sweetens pot for its bid to buy U.S. Steel
By Mike Feuz | Free the People
As tariffs shake the stock market and impact corporate shares, small businesses and families across the country are bracing for the impact. In Pittsburgh, brewers, grocery store owners, and others fear that their finances will go south as prices go north.
President Donald Trump says the tariffs are intended to create more economic opportunity for Americans who may feel the pain. One way he could make good on that promise is to approve Nippon Steel’s purchase of U.S. Steel, bringing over $20 billion worth of investments into tens of thousands of jobs across the country, including more than 1,000 in the Pittsburgh region.
When Nippon made its initial offer to buy U.S. Steel in December 2023, it included a nearly $15 billion purchase price. Since then, the company has announced a billion dollars to upgrade the Mon Valley plant, $300 million into the Gary, Indiana plant, and a $5,000 payout to each U.S. Steel employee once the deal closes. And just last Friday, the company announced billions more investments to try and secure approval from President Trump.
Promises are all well and good, but it wouldn’t be the executives signing the papers who face unemployment if plans were to change. That’s why union leaders and many workers have opposed the deal – they say Nippon is overpromising on its pledge to keep jobs domestic. Trump, who won significant support from middle-class workers in Pennsylvania on his way to winning the White House, opposed the deal last fall.
Enter the tariffs, which so far have caused fear and uncertainty for Pittsburghers. Trump has an opportunity to leverage the tariffs to improve Nippon Steel’s proposed deal to benefit workers and to help rebuild communities that have been harmed by the outsourcing of American manufacturing.
After all, Nippon clearly wants to buy U.S. Steel, and no wonder. Increased access to the U.S. market is important, and a strong domestic presence would help the company get around the new trade barriers. Trump has signaled approval for the company to be a minor investor in U.S. Steel – an option the company shot down at the end of February – and may even be open to a full merger.
Nippon, therefore, can only complete the purchase by making its offer more attractive not just to Trump, but also to the union workers to whom Trump is beholden after last year’s election. That probably means more cash – money that would offset the negative impacts of tariffs and make the American steel industry more competitive with competitors in nations like Canada and Mexico.
U.S. Steel would benefit, of course – who wouldn’t want to see over $20 billion put into its nationwide operations? But these dollars would immediately benefit steelworkers, including those in Pittsburgh, as U.S. Steel would keep its national headquarters – and a thousand jobs – in the region, on top of the payouts to individual workers. And it would benefit workers across the entire Western Pennsylvania region, as some of the merger money would help fund a workforce training center.
And it wouldn’t just be steelworkers and corporate executives in Western Pennsylvania who would benefit. Increased domestic production for years to come means tariffs would have less of an impact on the prices of those cars, homes, and appliances. Workers across many industries would be part of the Mon Valley plant’s upgrade.
And perhaps most importantly, Pittsburgh wouldn’t lose the industry that has defined its identity for the last century. “Steel City” would continue to provide for Americans as the center of tens of thousands of steel jobs across Pennsylvania. And, ironically, the same foreign competition that has threatened the industry for decades would take off the rust and refurbish it for the next 100 years.
Mike Feuz is an economic consultant by day and a research associate for the think tank Free the People by night.
