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Nippon Steel’s $14.9bn purchase of US Steel is facing a bipartisan political backlash in Washington, with prominent lawmakers vowing to scrutinise the deal and have it blocked by the Biden administration on national security grounds.
On Tuesday, three Republican senators sent a letter to Treasury secretary Janet Yellen asking for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, which vets international takeovers, to launch a review of the deal.
“[Cfius] can and should block the acquisition of US Steel by NSC, a company whose allegiances clearly lie with a foreign state and whose record in the United States is deeply flawed,” wrote JD Vance of Ohio, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marco Rubio of Florida. The Treasury declined to comment on the letter.
The proposed takeover is also facing some resistance from across the aisle. Summer Lee, a Democratic member of Congress from Pennsylvania, where US Steel is based, said she felt “blindsided and concerned” by the agreement.
She and Democratic senators John Fetterman and Bob Casey, both from the state, sent a letter on Tuesday to Nippon Steel’s president Eiji Hashimoto, complaining that the United Steelworkers union had not been consulted or notified before the agreement was announced, and demanding “further clarity on the proposal and its potential impacts to Pennsylvania’s industrial base and workers”.
On Monday, Fetterman released a video on X, with a US Steel plant near his home in the background, saying it was “absolutely outrageous that they have sold themselves to a foreign nation and company.
“I am committed to doing anything I can do — from using my platform and my position — in order to block this and I’m going to fight for the steel workers and their union way of life here. We cannot ever allow them to be screwed over or left behind.”
The burgeoning firestorm around the proposed takeover of US Steel could pose a political dilemma for President Joe Biden, who has cast himself as the most pro-union president in decades and a champion of American jobs. Biden will probably need to win Pennsylvania and Michigan, where the company has plants, to clinch re-election in 2024.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, declined to comment specifically on the potential sale of US Steel, noting it could be subject to regulatory review.
But Biden supported “steelworkers’ commitment to protecting American manufacturing that supports . . . sustaining union jobs”, she said.
“The president is committed to competition because he knows competition means lower costs for consumers and higher wages for workers — that’s incredibly important.”
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