WEST MIFFLIN, Pennsylvania — Flanked by a sea of steelworkers dressed in their orange safety jackets and hard hats, President Donald Trump was given a hero’s welcome at the Mon Valley Irvin Works to mark the signing of the U.S. Steel-Nippon Steel deal, the largest investment in state history.
“With the help from patriots like you, we are going to produce our own metal, make our own energy, secure our own future, build our country, control our own destiny and we are once again going to put Pennsylvania steel into the backbone of America,” Trump said of the deal between U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel that announced last Friday.
The deal to have a Japanese company purchase U.S. Steel has drawn bipartisan support across the state, from Pittsburgh’s Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA), to Braddock’s Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA). Gov. Josh Shapiro told the Washington Examiner in an interview on Wednesday that it was a “BFD” that Trump got this over the line.
Former President Joe Biden blocked the deal on national security grounds shortly before he left office.
A person familiar with the details said the benefits of the agreement include $14 billion in capital investment projects at U.S. Steel, with approximately $11 billion invested by 2028. These are investments that U.S. Steel could not make as a stand-alone company.
Those new capital investments include $2.2 billion to revitalize the only remaining blast furnace mill in Pittsburgh, $200 million for a new research and development center in Pennsylvania to bring world-leading technology to U.S. Steel, $1 billion invested by 2028 in a new Greenfield steel mill, and $3.1 billion in Indiana to transform the historic Gary Works mill.
There will also be a $3 billion investment in the Arkansas plant, including $1.8 billion for advanced electrical steel production for power grid transformers, $800 million in Minnesota to enhance iron ore mining, and $500 million in Alabama for tubular upgrades to supply American oil and gas dominance.
The investments and technology transfer will protect and create 100,000 jobs in Pennsylvania, according to an independent analysis by Parker Strategy Group. The analysis estimated that the investment would protect 11,400 jobs and create and support 14,000 new jobs, including over 10,200 in construction.
The deal preserves U.S. Steel’s headquarters in the iconic Pittsburgh skyscraper, the tallest building in Appalachia, and the company will maintain its production locations and capacity in the United States. As part of the agreement, American jobs are protected and cannot be offshored.
The deal also guarantees that the majority of U.S. Steel’s board must be U.S. citizens, and key management, including the CEO, will also all be U.S. citizens. The deal outlines that U.S. Steel’s trade actions will be determined solely by U.S. citizens, with oversight from the U.S. government, and free from any interference.
As outlined, the deal will improve domestic supply chains in the trucking and rail industries, increase the production of American automobiles, and boost energy production in the natural gas and coal industries, as well as boost the building of pipelines and power grid transformers.
The deal maintains U.S. Steel’s stature as an American icon, as well as stabilizes economic development in the Mon Valley, where three of the plants — the Edgar Thomson plant in Braddock, the Clairton Mill Works in Clairton, and the Irvin Works in West Mifflin — are located.
“For generations, the workers here have always been there for our country when we needed them the most,” Trump said, pointing to the crowd who rewarded him with cheers.
“You built this country,” he emphasized.
“From Pittsburgh to Pottstown from Bethlehem to Hopewell from Washington County to right here in West Mifflin, the foundries, the blast furnaces of Pennsylvania have smashed foreign armies, strengthened the hauls of the world’s greatest Navy, raised up majestic cities, won two world wars and made America into the richest, strongest most powerful country on the face of the Earth,” Trump said noting the contribution the men and women in the steel industry have had on the country economy, infrastructure and national defense for over 100 years.
Many of the steelworkers in the crowd were third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation steelworkers whose great-grandparents, grandparents, and fathers were the ones who forged that steel.
Trump said that under Biden’s policy of putting waivers on the tariffs that Trump placed in his first term, the industry suffered from uncertainty.
“We are going to get it back fast. It is almost back already,” he said, noting that the increase in tariffs he announced Friday night on imported steel, going from 25% to 50%, would accelerate the rebound of the domestic industry.
“Under our leadership we are making it richer, stronger and more powerful than ever before and that is why I thank you very much,” he said pointing to Nippon Steel vice chairman Takahiro Mori and U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt sitting in the front row at the rally held in the nearly 100-year-old Irvin Works plant.
Surrounded by steel coils inside the historic plant, the smell of the components that go into the making of steel, legendary former Pittsburgh Steeler Rocky Bleier, along with current players Mason Rudolph and Miles Killebrew, joined Trump onstage to present him with a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey with the number 47 on the back.
Trump was also joined onstage by plant manager Don German and USW Local 2227 President Jack Maskil and Vice President Jason Zugai, who all gave emotional speeches praising Trump for closing the deal and saving their lives and the livelihoods of future steelworkers for generations.
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Trump candidly admitted to the crowd he wasn’t sold on the deal when it first came to him, “They kept asking me over and over, and I kept rejecting it, no way, no way, no way,” he said, explaining that as Nippon kept sweetening the pot, he got more interested in the deal.
“The deal got better and better and better for the workers,” Trump said. “I’m going to be watching over it. It’s going to be great.”