President Trump will visit a U.S. Steel mill in the Pittsburgh suburbs Friday, a week after he announced a “planned partnership” between the company and its Japanese competitor Nippon Steel.
The deal will allow U.S. Steel’s headquarters to remain in Pennsylvania, according to Mr. Trump, who characterized the agreement last Sunday as “an investment” and “partial ownership” that will be “controlled” by the United States. The administration has released few details about the deal, however.
Mr. Trump’s announcement last week was the latest twist in Nippon’s yearslong effort to acquire U.S. Steel. Its nearly $15 billion bid to buy U.S. Steel was blocked by former President Joe Biden in January on national security grounds.
Mr. Trump, who opposed the acquisition during the 2024 campaign, has since warmed to a deal between the steel producers, touting a $14 billion investment that the president said would create at least 70,000 jobs.
Sen. David McCormick, a Pennsylvania Republican, provided more details on the agreement in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, saying that U.S. Steel would have an American CEO and a majority of its board members will be from the U.S., an arrangement that was also part of the deal rejected by Biden.
McCormick did raise one potential difference in the latest iteration, stating that the U.S. would have a golden share.
“It’s a national security agreement that will be signed with the U.S. government,” McCormick said. “There’ll be a golden share, which will 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.”
McCormick said Nippon will have “certainly members of the board, and this will be part of their overall corporate structure.”
“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 of Nippon. “They’ve negotiated it, it was their proposal.”
It is not yet clear whether the golden share provision involves any U.S. ownership of the merged companies.
The United Steelworkers union has opposed a sale, arguing that the Japanese company is making “flashy promises” that put American jobs at risk.
But without an acquisition, U.S. Steel had warned last year that the company would “largely pivot away” from its blast furnace facilities, which would put thousands of jobs in jeopardy. The company said the future of its headquarters in Pittsburgh was also uncertain without an agreement.
U.S. Steel employs about 22,000 people, with more than 14,000 employees in North America and the rest in Slovakia.
