Editorial: Opponents of Nippon Steel deal don't represent Pittsburgh's interests

The Editorial Board / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

An expanded commitment by Nippon Steel to invest over $1 billion in the Mon Valley Works, followed by further denunciations of the Japanese steelmaker’s acquisition of U.S. Steel by United Steelworkers leadership and presidential contender Kamala Harris, raises the question: Is there nothing Nippon can do to mollify its critics?

More pointedly: Does anybody in a position of power have the best interests of the United States, and of the Pittsburgh region in particular, at heart?

While it is painful for the quintessential Pittsburgh company, U.S. Steel, to be owned by a foreign corporation, there is no long-term future for steelmaking in Pittsburgh — dirty, clean or otherwise — under American ownership. Nippon offers the only chance to save, and to expand and to clean up, the Mon Valley Works.

Previously, Nippon had promised $1.4 billion in upgrades to U.S. Steel’s American facilities but without making a specific commitment to Pittsburgh. Both in editorials and in a meeting with Nippon executive Takahiro Mori, the Post-Gazette Editorial Board pressed for more concrete obligations to the Pittsburgh region.

That’s exactly what Nippon has now offered, after making precisely the detailed analysis Mr. Mori described in our meeting: an expanded promise to invest $2.4 billion in facilities nationwide, with at least $1 billion earmarked for the Mon Valley.

The Steelworkers leadership responded immediately and contemptuously: “a press release is not a contract.” But Nippon has offered to make its commitment contractually binding. The company is just waiting for the union to take them up on it.

Politicians from across the ideological spectrum, including Ms. Harris and Republican candidates Donald Trump and JD Vance, have seized on opposition to the Nippon acquisition as a potent talking point. Even Gov. Josh Shapiro, who secured a promise to move Nippon’s North American headquarters to Pittsburgh and was seen as a quiet supporter of the deal, turned against it while jockeying for Ms. Harris’s vice-presidential slot.

These leaders have called the acquisition a danger to economic sovereignty, national security and workers’ rights. It is none of those things. In fact, they can only be secured in the American steel industry if Nippon acquires U.S. Steel.

The only alternatives for U.S. Steel are to hobble along as a crippled independent company or to be acquired at a 50% discount by rival Cleveland-Cliffs. Either would result in mass layoffs and the shuttering of Pennsylvania steelmaking facilities, and the second in likely anti-trust litigation.

That would weaken America’s ability to produce steel, which is the real danger to the country’s economic strength and security. No other nation’s economic and security interests are as aligned with the United States’ as Japan’s, which is also invested in checking the growth of Chinese influence.

As for workers’ rights, Nippon is promising the kind of stability — and even possibly growth — for the steel industry in Pittsburgh that most observers, not to mention everyday employees, thought was out of reach forever. Whatever is motivating USW leadership’s opposition to the deal, it is not the long-term security of steelmaking jobs in Western Pennsylvania, which can only be secured through Nippon.

Opposition to the Nippon sounds like a bold defense of American industry and workers, but it will only hurt the people — and the region — it’s meant to support. If grandstanding politicians prevent the deal, it will be among the greatest self-inflicted economic wounds in Western Pennsylvania’s history.