President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he’s doubling tariffs on foreign steel from 25 to a mammoth 50 percent as he celebrated a “partnership” between U.S. Steel and Japan’s Nippon Steel.
“We’re going to bring it from 25 percent to 50 percent, the tariffs on steel into the United States of America, which will even further secure the steel industry in the United States. Nobody is going to get around that,” Trump told a cheering crowd outside Pittsburgh.
Steel tariffs were not part of the lawsuit in which a judge ruled this week that many levies imposed by the Trump administration were unlawful.
Trump took to the podium at the U.S. Steel plant a week after announcing that he had approved a merger between the company and Nippon.
The president spoke to an enthusiastic crowd at the Irvin Works in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, with both union members and investors listening for answers on specifics of the deal, as details remain murky.
Nippon Steel has sought over the years to purchase U.S. Steel in a deal once criticized by Trump and ultimately blocked by former President Joe Biden in January. Biden blocked the purchase, citing national security risks of foreign control of a critical American supply chain.
But Trump has characterized the currentdeal as an investment and a “partnership,” while other reports have characterized it as an acquisition of U.S. Steel.
The steelworkers union was reserving judgement on the arrangement until it has more information.
The international president of the United Steelworkers, David McCall, said in a lengthy statement Friday: “We have not participated in the discussions involving U.S. Steel, Nippon Steel, and the Trump administration, nor were we consulted, so we cannot speculate about the meaning of the ‘planned partnership’ between USS and Nippon or the ‘golden share’ that some politicians have claimed will be issued to the federal government.”
Issuing “press releases and making political speeches is easy. Binding commitments are hard,” McCall added. “The devil is always in the details, and that is especially true with a bad actor like Nippon Steel that has again and again violated our trade laws, devastating steel communities in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.”
Trump vowed at the rally that the headquarters of U.S. Steel, a 120-year-old icon of American industry, would remain in Pittsburgh even amid significant investment from Nippon.
Calling the investment “record-setting,” Trump said the company would make a “$14 billion commitment to the future of” U.S. Steel.
“You’re gonna stay an American company, you know that,” he claimed at the rally, adding that “Japan has been a tremendous friend of mine.”
Last Sunday Trump called the agreement is an “investment, it’s a partial ownership, but it will be controlled by the USA.”
Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters outside the White House Friday that “Nippon Steel is going to have some involvement, but no control” of U.S. Steel, despite its massive $14 billion investment.
U.S. Steel has said that the deal is a “merger,” yet is also set to become a “wholly owned subsidiary” of Nippon Steel North America. However, the company has also said that it will carry on operating as a separate entity, according to an April 8 Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Nippon is set to close the deal with U.S. Steel at $55 per share, according to CNBC.
On Friday, Trump vowed U.S. Steel would see billions of dollars in new investments.
“It’s going to be something even more special when you get all [those] billions of dollars of new equipment that they’re going to be investing right here,” he said.
“Companies all over the world have announced nearly $10 billion in new investments in steel, just in steel alone, but the Nippon investment we’re announcing today blows them all away,” he added.
The president further claimed that Nippon would “also invest $2.2 billion to increase steel production in the Mon Valley works, specifically allocated to Mon Valley, along with $200 million for the Advanced Technology Research and Development Center that’s being built already in Pennsylvania.”
“And in addition, another $7 billion to modernize steel mills, expand ore mines, and build state-of-the-art facilities in Indiana, Minnesota, Alabama, and Arkansas,” he added.
The president said that the new investments would “create and save over 100,000 American jobs, including 14,000 jobs in Pennsylvania.”
“U.S. Steel will maintain all of its current operating blast furnaces at full capacity for a minimum of the next 10 years,” he claimed.
Yet details of the deal have not been released.
Steelworkers Union President McCall warned: “Our members know from decades of negotiating contracts: Trust nothing until you see it in writing.”
