Unified opposition to Nippon-US Steel takeover is misguided: economists, Pittsburgh officials

While both former President Trump and the Biden-Harris administration have voiced opposition to the proposed takeover of U.S. Steel by Japan-based Nippon, one top economic expert and a local Pittsburgh official said on Friday that many such concerns are unfounded.

"This is the best deal," said Sam DeMarco III, the GOP chair in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where U.S. Steel is based. The Biden-Harris administration has signaled a willingness to use executive powers to block the sale.

The deal would likely keep the entire company intact, DeMarco said, calling a previous purchase attempt by a domestic concern akin to a "hostile takeover."

Meanwhile, in addition to Trump and the Biden administration, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has voiced opposition to the sale, noting that he lives directly across from U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thompson mill in Braddock. 

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When reports surfaced that the company threatened to move their headquarters out of Pittsburgh if the sale were to be blocked, Fetterman said, "I’m calling bulls--- on the U.S. Steel executives."

"As I’ve always said, I will follow and stand with the United Steelworkers against the shameless executives looking for a golden parachute," Fetterman said in a statement.

In a separate statement Monday, Fetterman said it is "absolutely outrageous" to hear U.S. Steel agreeing to such a sale, adding that steel is "about national security and economic security of" industrial communities.

"I am committed to doing anything I can do, using my platform and my position, to block this foreign sale," he said.

In response, DeMarco told Fox News Digital, "I’m calling bulls--- on John Fetterman."

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"National security is fundamentally based upon economic security — and here is a proposed merger that would only strengthen the United States steel industry and allow us to make higher-grade and better products. And help others," he said.

DeMarco said that ensuring good jobs for the union workers of the Monongahela (or "Mon") Valley is paramount to him and many others in the Pittsburgh area.

He said that Fetterman’s view ignores the idea that a sale he characterized as strengthening the U.S. company will allow the U.S. to better compete with China.

"Here we are exhibiting xenophobic behavior in rejecting a deal with Japan, one of our strongest allies," DeMarco said. "We trust them with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: Right. We trust them with Patriot missiles, but we don't trust them to help come here and make steel?"

Joel Griffith, an economic research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Roe Institute, has himself written at length about the benefits of a Nippon takeover.

Speaking with Fox News Digital, Griffith said that united political opposition over a sale’s economic repercussions has already cost shareholders billions of dollars with the decrease in U.S. Steel’s market value.

"There’s really a fairness and morality argument at play here, as well, because by attempting to block this, this is harming many individual investors [plus] the broader economy," he said.

Griffith said that while critics express concern over foreign purchases of U.S. entities, in this case, Nippon is based in Japan, a staunch U.S. ally, and has signaled an ensuing infusion of billions of dollars in capital to keep the company churning out American-made steel.

"This would actually bolster [U.S. Steel’s] operations in the United States, to the benefit of current and future workers," he said.

Griffith said there is concern that by the feds stepping in to block the sale, it would signal to foreign investors worldwide that the U.S. is no longer as welcoming of outside investment.

Of those critics of the sale warning that it would pad executives’ pockets, Griffith said there are millions of shareholders, large and on the personal "retail" level, who would benefit from the market’s response to the sale.

DeMarco separately suggested that Trump expressed the best intentions with his anti-buyout viewpoint, but that if he were to be further briefed on the benefits of such a sale, he might change his tune.

Fetterman’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

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Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to Trump, said the Republican nominee has been clear in pledging to keep steel mills under domestic ownership.

"The American steel industry trusts President Trump, because he delivered for them in his first term. Our U.S. manufacturing base, including U.S. steel production, is suffering because of the weak and failed trade policies and skyrocketing production costs under the Harris-Biden administration," he said.

Trump’s stance of applying "smart tariff policies" and opening up domestic energy production is the best way to level the playing field globally, Hughes added.