Joe Biden plans to block the proposed sale of US Steel, the Washington Post reports (gift link). The company insisted Wednesday that if federal regulators prevent Japan’s Nippon Steel from buying the American manufacturing giant, it would have no choice but to close plants, lay off union workers, move its corporate headquarters from Pittsburgh to some city whose football team’s logo isn’t the same as US Steel’s, and maybe even do something desperate, too, like take up skydiving, how would you like THAT?
If the merger goes through, it would create the world’s third-largest steel company, which both companies say is necessary to compete with China.
Holding a flashlight under his corporate chin to seem extra scary, US Steel CEO David Burritt warned Wednesday that if the merger is blocked, that could place at risk
“thousands of good-paying union jobs” and raise “serious questions” about the likelihood that the company would remain headquartered in Pittsburgh.
Last week, Nippon Steel increased its planned investment in the new U.S. Steel by $1.3 billion in addition to the $1.4 billion it had previously detailed. The Japanese company said the extra money would two of U.S. Steel’s largest facilities, the Mon Valley Works in Pennsylvania and Gary Works in Indiana.
Attempts to reach the Washington Post for a verb were unsuccessful.
Update: It only took about three and a half hours after the story initially went up for a verb to arrive: “modernize.” Now we can all sleep tonight.
The deal has been publicly opposed by both major-party candidates for president, Kamala Harris and the other one, demonstrating that the two steel companies may be rapacious capitalists but that neither has yet tried bribing Donald Trump.
CNN notes that the United Steelworkers union has opposed the deal from the get-go, and that the union condemned Burritt for making “baseless and unlawful threats,” and “a last gasp and desperate effort to save a merger on life support.” The union further said Burritt’s “reckless statements and mismanagement are the only true obstacle to US Steel remaining a sustainable steel company.”
Well hell, we’re with the union on that. Never trust a CEO.
The usual Free Trade dinguses all screeched protectionism! and wailed like Donald Sutherland at the end of Body Snatchers, because endless monopolies are good for everyone. The US Chamber of Commerce accused Biden of “politicizing” an everyday business transaction and of sending a “chilling signal” to other giant foreign corporations eager to take over American businesses, how dare he.
The deal has also been subject to a fair amount of greenwashing propaganda, with the Koch-friendly “Real Clear Energy” site heralding the merger as a supposed win for the climate, since maybe just maybe Nippon Steel will boost the production of steel using electric furnaces instead of the coal-intensive blast furnaces that most US Steel plants use. Don’t buy those empty promises, say climate advocates, who note that when it comes to shifting away from blast furnaces and to electrification, both US Steel and Nippon are far more talk than action, and that with the greater access to markets they’d have after a merger, they’d have little incentive to shift away from the more carbon-intensive old way of doing things.
Now you have had some jokes and learned a thing, it is your OPEN THREAD.
[WaPo (gift link) / CNN / WFYI / Vintage postcard via Steve Shook, Creative Commons License 2.0]
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