White House signals approval of Nippon Steel-US Steel merger

The long-delayed completion of the 2023 bid by Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel Corp. (NSC) for the assets of United States Steel Corp. finally might be near, based on two statements issued May 23.

On Friday, before the stock market closed for Memorial Day weekend, President Donald Trump made a social media post referring to a “planned partnership between United States Steel and Nippon Steel” that he was “proud to announce.”

The roughly 150-word post from the President states in part that “after much consideration and negotiation, U.S. Steel will remain in America and keep its headquarters in the great city of Pittsburgh.”

The president says the planned partnership between U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel will add $14 billion to the U.S. economy and indicates the bulk of that investment will occur in the next 14 months.

Trump also indicates he will be in Pittsburgh May 30 for a “big rally.”

Later Friday, after the New York Stock Exchange had closed for the three-day weekend, U.S. Steel posted a brief announcement to its website referring to Trump as “a bold leader and businessman who knows how to get the best deal for America, American workers and American manufacturing.”

“U.S. Steel will remain American, and we will grow bigger and stronger through a partnership with Nippon Steel that brings massive investment, new technologies and thousands of jobs over the next four years," the company says.

After making its winning bid for U.S. Steel in December 2023, NSC announced eight months later it intended to invest $1.3 billion in U.S. Steel blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace (BOF) mills in Indiana and Pennsylvania.

Nonetheless, the fate of the acquisition became a political issue when then-President Joe Biden and Trump both came out against the merger in attempts to appeal to voters in the tightly contested state of Pennsylvania.

Whether opposition to the merger was helpful to either candidate is unclear, especially in light of a campaign by some U.S. Steel employees who supported the merger and saw it as the only way forward for the blast furnace/BOF facilities.

In the course of the 15 months the merger has been contested, blast furnace/BOF facility operators in North America have struggled to maintain profitability.

U.S. Steel lost $114 million in the first quarter of this year, while Cleveland-Cliffs—at one time a rival bidder for U.S. Steel’s assets—has lost about $1.1 billion in 2024 and the first three months of 2025 combined.

Both the president’s social media post and the U.S. Steel expression of gratitude toward the announcement are devoid of details on to what extent the partnership referred to by Trump is identical to or different from the acquisition as approved by board members and shareholders of NSC and U.S. Steel.