In the first face to face meeting between US President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba at the White House today, it was announced that Japanese steel maker Nippon Steel would be investing in rather than purchasing US Steel.
As part of an announced $1 trillion investment with the US, Trump said Nippon Steel has agreed to drop its purchase attempt for the troubled US steel maker, and instead will invest an undisclosed amount of money with the company.
Further details of the arrangement were not immediately available, however, more details are expected to be announced once US Steel and Nippon meet sometime next week, Trump said.
“It’s an investment, not a purchase,” he said in reaction to questions about the US Steel deal. Trump plans to “mediate and arbitrate the deal,” though he failed to offer more details.
The Japanese leader also said Japan would be investing an undisclosed amount of money in US auto plants, as well as collaborating with the US on the Alaska Pipeline. The import of LNG and ethanol from the US also was also announced.
As recently as mid-January, Lourenco Goncalves, the CEO of Ohio-based steelmaker Cleveland Cliffs, said in a news conference that he wanted to make a new bid for US Steel, which accepted a buyout offer from Nippon in 2023 after it rejected an earlier offer from Cliffs.
The Biden administration nixed the US Steel acquisition in January citing a potential threat to national security, though the US Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS, failed to reach a consensus on the security issue.
US Steel had previously warned that, without a purchase from Nippon it would have to shift production away from the blast furnaces to cheaper non-union electric arc furnaces (EAFs) and move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.