Trump administration offers some details of how it would control US Steel, but union raises concerns
CALGARY, Alberta (AP) — President Donald Trump would have unique influence over the operations of U.S. Steel under the terms of the investment being made by Nippon Steel.
Administration officials over the past few days provided additional insight into the 'golden share' arrangement that the federal government made as a condition for supporting the partnership. The Pittsburgh-based steel maker and Nippon Steel plan $11 billion in new investments by 2028 after indicating that they plan to move forward in a partnership.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posted on social media on Saturday how the 'golden share' to be held by the president would operate, revealing that the White House is willing to insert itself aggressively into a private company's affairs even as it has simultaneously pledged to strip away government regulations so businesses can expand.
Under the government's terms, it would be impossible without Trump's consent to relocate U.S. Steel's headquarters from Pittsburgh, change the name of the company, 'transfer production or jobs outside the United States,' shutter factories, or reincorporate the business overseas, among other powers held by the president.
Lutnick also said it would require presidential approval to reduce or delay $14 billion in planned investments. That figure is higher than what the companies disclosed on Friday when Trump created a pathway for the investment with an executive order based on the terms of the national security agreement being accepted.
'The Golden Share held by the United States in U.S. Steel has powerful terms that directly benefit and protect America, Pennsylvania, the great steelworkers of U.S. Steel, and U.S. manufacturers that will have massively expanded access to domestically produced steel,' Lutnick posted on X.
The president has the authority to name one of the corporate board's independent three directors and veto power over the other two choices, according to a person familiar with the terms of the agreement who insisted on anonymity to discuss them. The details of the board structure were first reported by The New York Times.
Still, the full terms remain somewhat unclear.
Nippon Steel has never publicly backed off the idea that it is buying U.S. Steel as a wholly owned subsidiary.
On Sunday, the United Steelworkers, the labor union representing U.S. Steel employees, posted a letter raising questions about the deal forged by Trump, who during his run for the presidency had pledged to block any merger.
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The union said it was 'disappointed' that Trump 'has reversed course' and raised basic questions about the ownership structure of U.S. Steel.
'Neither the government nor the companies have publicly identified what all the terms of the proposed transaction are,' the letter said. 'Our labor agreement expires next year, on September 1, 2026, and the USW and its members are prepared to engage the new owners' of U.S. Steel 'to obtain a fair contract.'
If Trump has as much control of U.S. Steel as he has claimed, that could put him in the delicate position of negotiating the salary and benefits of unionized steelworkers going into midterm elections.
___
Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
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Canada Standard
13 minutes ago
- Canada Standard
"I doubt Mr. Modi's advisors are even aware of it": Jairam Ramesh recalls India's historic role in Cyprus' independence
New Delhi [India], June 16 (ANI): Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Monday highlighted India's pivotal role in supporting Cypriot independence in the 1950s under Jawaharlal Nehru, which he said he doubted Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'advisors are even aware of.' The Congress leader's remarks in a social media post come amid the ongoing visit of PM Modi to Cyprus. Ramesh recalled India's leadership at the Afro-Asian Bandung Conference, the close ties between Nehru and Archbishop Makarios III. In a post on X, Jairam questioned whether the current government is even aware of this shared legacy, emphasising the strategic and historical importance of Indo-Cypriot relations. 'The Prime Minister is in Cyprus on his way to Canada. Of course, He would have us believe that it is a pure coincidence that a key figure in the Modani scam has Cypriot citizenship. The Cyprus-based fund New Leaina has reportedly about $420 million in Adani companies. The 'ultimate beneficial owners' of this fund are linked to Amicorp, which is believed to have set up at least seven Adani promoter entities, seventeen offshore shell companies linked to Mr. Vinod Adani, and three Mauritius-based offshore investors in Adani Group stock. All these transactions are part of the ongoing SEBI investigations which have been hampered by lack of sharing of financial information by these and other tax-haven countries and lack of pressure by India,' he said. He recalled that Cyprus gained independence from British rule on August 16, 1960. In the 1950s, India spearheaded the international campaign for the full decolonisation of the island. 'Nehru had, in fact, ensured the participation of the Cypriot leader and freedom fighter Archbishop Makarios III at the historic Afro-Asian Bandung Conference held in Indonesia in late April 1955. Makarios was the only European to attend that summit. Two years later VK Krishna Menon had created a stir at the United Nations in New York by introducing a resolution on Cyprus and by his impassioned speech. Page 1 of the New York Times had carried news of this resolution prominently,' Jairam said. The Congress leader also mentioned that the 'charismatic Archbishop', who became the first President of the Cypriot Republic, himself was to visit New Delhi in November 1962. 'He spent two weeks in India. When Nehru died, a public holiday and a day of mourning was announced on May 27, 1964. In the early 1980s, a busy and scenic road in the Golf Links locality of our capital came to be named after the Archbishop although the signage splits the two words!' he said. Jairam Ramesh also mentioned that the three distinguished Indian army men--Lt. Gen P. S. Gyani, the legendary Gen K. S. Thimayya, and Lt. Gen Dewan Prem Chand--headed the United Nations Force In Cyprus (UNFICYP) between 1964 and 1974. 'Two scholars have just written a fine piece on the UNFICYP that also brings out India's key role in the emergence of the Republic of Cyprus. I doubt that Mr. Modi's advisors are even aware of it,' Jairam Ramesh added. 'In the context of today's geopolitics it is worthwhile to recall that India's championing of the independence of Cyprus in the 1950s and thereafter became a sore point in our bilateral relations with Turkey,' the Congress leader said. In a significant diplomatic outreach, Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Cyprus on Sunday afternoon (local time), marking the first-ever visit by an Indian PM to the island nation. The visit is seen as an important stopover ahead of the G7 Summit in Canada and a reflection of India's renewed focus on strengthening ties with European partners. (ANI)
National Observer
26 minutes ago
- National Observer
Could Canada's carbon capture ambitions catch a chill from Iceland's struggling Mammoth project?
Iceland and Canada lie over 4,500 kilometres apart on a world map, yet news that a pioneering carbon removal project near Reykjavik is falling well short of expectations a year after its launch has hit home with some North American sector skeptics closely watching the climate technology's progress. Switzerland's Climeworks, which has raised US $800 million, opened the world's largest operational direct air capture (DAC) plant, known as Mammoth, to global fanfare in May last year. But the facility, which uses what look like walls of giant fans to capture CO 2 directly from the air and then pumps it deep underground, has not measured up to expectations. The pilot project pulled just 105 tonnes of CO 2 from the air in its first 12 months of operation, a fraction of its projected annual capacity of 36,000 tonnes, according to a report by Iceland's Heimildin newspaper last month. 'That is less than the annual emissions of a dozen long-haul trucks,' said Michael Barnard, a prominent clean energy technology analyst and self-styled debunker of greenwashing technologies. Climeworks has not responded to the news report or to requests for comment from Canada's National Observer. But the slow start at Mammoth has sparked discussion in clean energy circles over the wisdom of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in similar CO 2 removal projects in Canada. 'We don't need a billion-dollar vacuum cleaner for the sky,' Barnard said in a LinkedIn post. 'We need heat pumps, EVs, and clean electricity. DAC might serve as niche cleanup after 2050 — maybe.' Canada was already betting on direct air capture before the Iceland setback. The Trudeau government supported DAC development through tax credits covering 60 per cent of construction costs, a $10 million commitment to carbon removal service purchases, and a draft federal offset protocol allowing DAC companies to generate tradeable carbon credits. These incentives and guaranteed demand aim to lure private investment in DAC and potentially boost the Liberals' faltering pledge to reach net-zero emissions in Canada by 2050. Following his April election, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada could be a leader in carbon capture and storage as part of a controversial effort to decarbonize oil and gas, including extending tax credits and setting carbon dioxide removal targets. Canada is taking the opposite approach to the United States, where Trump administration budget cuts could eliminate up to US $1 billion in Department of Energy (DOE) funding for two direct air capture demonstration projects in Texas and Louisiana. Nevertheless, DAC is gathering pace elsewhere, with roughly 150 companies working on projects around the world. Eight companies are located in Canada, including Montreal-based start-up Deep Sky's Alpha project — a first-of-its-kind solar-powered DAC technology hub in Alberta partly backed by Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Catalyst fund. Deep Sky Alpha, on track to bring the first of as many as 14 different DAC plant concepts online this summer, is expected to cost over $110 million over the next decade. Whether any will make the leap to commercialization remains a question mark, said Phil De Luna, Deep Sky's chief carbon scientist and head of engineering. 'In the current geopolitical climate, with the US Trump administration cutting DOE funding for key DAC projects, there are understandably some concerns about development of the technology,' he told Canada's National Observer. 'But this only makes the industry more focused — and the scrutiny being shown [to projects like Mammoth] is overall a healthy thing and helps all of us in learning as we go in developing DAC technologies.' Trials of a 'first of a kind' technology Where industry observers like Barnard see an expensive technology failing to live up to its hype, De Luna remains optimistic. He said only a 'subsection' of the Mammoth plant was fully commissioned, and despite the low carbon capture rate, the results show the technology works, he said. 'I think the marketing [by Climeworks on its Iceland project] and the attention generated has been a little premature,' said De Luna, who toured the facility during a recent holiday in Iceland. 'This is first-of-a-kind technology, and it's tremendously positive that we know the technology is working,' he said. Jorden Dye, director of the Carbon Dioxide Removal Centre, a Calgary-based think-tank, said the poor results from Iceland were 'nothing more than a bump in the road' and direct air capture could be a viable technology for climate mitigation in the years to come. 'If we are not developing DAC now — working through the prototypes, getting it deployed at ever-larger scale, commercializing it — then we won't have it ready when we need it by mid-century,' he said. Barnard, a former IBM troubleshooter who now consults on energy transition technologies for industrial conglomerates, said DAC 'does work and will work better' as it is developed, but it would not be economically scalable by 2050, if ever. 'DAC is economically non-viable. It's a dead technology walking,' he said. The current uses for captured CO 2 — such as injecting carbon dioxide into aging oil and gas reservoirs to boost pressure and production, as well as into concrete, plastics or biofuels — account for a very small percentage of the 35-45 billion tonnes of CO 2 added to the atmosphere each year, he said. 'So the 'U' in CCUS [carbon capture, utilization and storage], for instance, will never become material," Barnard said. If captured CO 2 isn't being used, he said it only makes sense to build DAC plants where it's possible to store large volumes in geological structures like depleted fossil fuel reservoirs or rock formations deep underground. 'Carbon capture, if it can be made to pencil out at all, only does so in a very limited number of places,' Barnard said. To make sense from a climate and economic point of view, any new carbon removal technology would need to capture around 100 million tonnes annually, according to Barnard's calculations. Achieving this scale would require hundreds of kilometres of so-called 'extractor walls' made of porous materials to absorb CO 2. Nature-based alternatives — from reforesting denuded lands and planting tree farms, to restoring waterways and wetlands — are a better investment, Barnard said, as well as stepping up the electrification of industries and transportation. Canada "well positioned" Despite the economic and technological hurdles, proponents point to DAC's key role in Canada's carbon management strategy to reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. 'Canada is incredibly well-positioned to lead in advancing this technology — which will take time to develop, but which we are definitely going to need due to climate change,' Dye said. "Carbon capture, if it can be made to pencil out at all, only does so in a very limited number of places. Canada has two advantages for DAC projects. First, 80 per cent of the country's electricity comes from renewable sources, primarily hydroelectric power that provides the clean, affordable energy that carbon removal plants need. Second, Canada's underground geology can store about 678 gigatonnes of CO 2 — nearly equal to the country's entire emissions in 2023 and more than twice Canada's objective of carbon removal by 2050, according to Carbon Removal Canada. The industry lobby group projects that a full-scale DAC industry could create 300,000 jobs and add $143 billion to Canada's GDP by 2050. 'DAC needs the intersection of renewable power and geologic storage and there are very few places on the planet that have these in the abundance we do here in Canada,' De Luna said. The global DAC market could exceed US $1 trillion by 2050, according to projections from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and McKinsey & Company. Still, the disappointing news from Mammoth could affect investor perceptions of direct air capture projects, said Na'im Merchant, Carbon Removal Canada's CEO. 'There are well over 100 companies around the world that are doing 'something new and difficult for the first time' to develop these technologies,' he told Canada's National Observer. 'Some might outperform expectations, some might underperform, but we haven't yet made the kind of investment needed to help commercialize these technologies to let up now," he said. "I do worry public perception of a project like Mammoth could affect investor perception [of the viability of DAC]." Multiple pilot projects could help to identify scalable technologies worthy of the major investment needed to build carbon removal plants that can benefit from economies of scale, he said. Barnard disagrees. While Wright's Law — which says the cost of manufactured items gets cheaper for every doubling of units produced — explains a 90 per cent plunge in solar panel prices in the past decade, DAC will not see such cost reductions, he said. 'Solar got cheap because [the industry] had billions of units, huge consumer markets, and steep learning curves and [photovoltaic panels] were relatively simple objects to make,' he said. DAC involves industrial-scale infrastructure moving huge volumes of air through kilometres of fan walls. 'Only thousands of units will be manufactured per type of DAC and most of the components are already bog-standard and cost-optimized,' he said. "Creating the right policy environment, so investors feel DAC is sufficiently derisked must ultimately be more important than early results from a first-of-its-kind carbon removal technology like Climeworks" The technology faces other challenges. 'It takes energy to separate dilute CO 2 from air and then separate the CO 2 from whatever captured it — lots of it. There's no magic breakthrough coming,' Barnard said. DAC's development is also a policy puzzle. "Creating the right policy environment, so investors feel DAC is sufficiently derisked must ultimately be more important than early results from a first-of-its-kind carbon removal technology like Climeworks," Merchant said. He sees the US policy retreat as Canada's opportunity to accelerate the development of demonstration-scale plants capturing hundreds of thousands of tonnes annually. Environment and Climate Change Canada spokesperson Samantha Bayard said in an emailed statement that Ottawa was 'still consulting' on the draft offset protocol for using direct air capture that qualifies for federal offset and pricing systems, as well as clean electricity regulations. The federal government supported DAC because it was 'recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency that there is no credible path to net-zero emissions without [these] carbon management technologies," she said. Canadian 'DAC Olympics' Deep Sky Alpha, being built in Innisfail, AB, will play a central role in growing small-scale pilots to mid-size demonstrators. Start-ups such as ReCarbn, Carbyon, Carbon Atlantis, and Skyrenu are already queuing up for construction and commissioning. 'We see Alpha as the DAC Olympics,' De Luna said, adding the project will help identify what technologies work best for Canada's climate and inform investor decisions on whether to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to scale up the technology. Other Canadian projects are moving ahead as well, including a maiden DAC plant in Fermont, northern Quebec, developed by Ottawa-based TerraFixing and partner Tugliq Énergie, a green energy supplier in Montreal. 'This project will take full advantage of Quebec's clean hydroelectricity and huge wind power resource, so it will point the way toward developing more renewables in the province as well as proving our technology on the way to commercialization,' TerraFixing CEO, Vida Gabriel, told Canada's National Observer. The Fermont project, expected to go online later this year, comprises a pair of TerraFixing DAC units powered by wind and backed up by hydro. Each unit aims to capture up to 1,000 tonnes of CO 2 per year. Industrial-scale demand needed The federal government's carbon removal strategy envisions deploying a range of technologies that will spur the development of a 'world class, multi-billion-dollar carbon management sector.' While it concedes that DAC is 'less mature' than CCUS, it believes direct air capture holds 'significant' potential for current climate action plans. Ottawa's carbon removal procurement plans are an important first step, Merchant said, but federal purchases need to increase tenfold now and another tenfold after 2030, given that industrial demand for carbon credits will drive DAC growth. 'We need to create the demand for DAC across government, the corporate sector, from heavy-emitting industry — we won't get to gigatonne-scale [carbon removal] plants without it,' he said. Corporate early adopters are already emerging. Shopify, an online marketplace platform, last year founded a group called Frontier alongside Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, and McKinsey Sustainability, with plans to spend US $925 million on carbon removal. Separately, RBC and Microsoft have signed deals with Deep Sky to buy DAC carbon credits over the next 10 years. Climate change won't wait, however. DAC proponents argue technologies must be developed now to be ready to capture and store legacy emissions in the decades ahead, regardless of how quickly the world decarbonizes. 'We have to factor in 'pipeline warming,'' De Luna said, adding that even if all emissions ceased immediately, global warming would persist for decades and require removing at least a decade's worth of CO 2 already in the atmosphere. 'The criticism of DAC — it's too energy intensive, too costly, too hard to scale up — overlooks this," he said. "Clean energy, yes, it is absolutely what we should do, but there are still emissions to be dealt with and DAC will be a big part of the solution there.' Carbon cost disincentive One issue is that Canadian companies are reluctant to pay the price of carbon credits. The federal carbon levy, launched at $20 per tonne in 2019, rises $15 annually and is expected to reach $170 per tonne by 2030. But De Luna believes 'over time this willingness to pay will change' as carbon removal gets cheaper and companies face intensifying pressure to decarbonize. Today, the cost of pulling CO 2 from the atmosphere is around US $1,000/tonne — what Climeworks has paid to capture emissions at its Mammoth facility. The Swiss company has said its Generation 3 technology aimed to reduce costs to US $250-350/tonne of CO 2 captured, and achieve a total cost of US $400-600/tonne removed by 2030. Deep Sky sees a route over the next three to five years to reduce their costs to $400/tonne and then 'in the 2030s' closer to $200/tonne. 'We are never going to get the cost down to as low a level as we need if we don't start building now,' said De Luna. 'We are never going to get the cost down to as low a level as we need if we don't start building now." 'We are already seeing precipitous cost reductions between the technologies we are piloting at Alpha and the next-generation technologies that we are evaluating for our next projects there," he added. Barnard argues climate action investments by governments and industry should be directed solely at clean energy — solar power, battery technologies and electric vehicles. 'If we electrify as fast as we might, we will not have anywhere near the demand for technologies like DAC,' he said. 'DAC is not going to help us in Canada or on this planet with our 2050 emissions reduction targets. Renewables, led by solar and batteries, will.' 'Co-opted' by Big Oil? Without wider public support, Merchant warned, DAC risked becoming a 'fig leaf' that allows fossil fuel companies to continue business as usual. US oil giant Occidental is an example of this concern. Its Stratos facility in Texas will be the world's largest DAC plant, capturing 500,000 tonnes of CO2 yearly and, according to the company, help preserve its core oil and gas business. 'This gives our industry a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years that I think it's going to be very much needed,' Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub told a Houston oil and gas conference in 2023. Investor sentiment for DAC is also highly dynamic, with feverish interest in the technology in the early 2020s giving way to greater investor wariness. That could shift again. 'The carbon removal investor 'gold rush' we saw a few years ago is over. This is a time of stress for the sector,' Gabriel said. 'Canada can seize the opportunity to rapidly advance DAC and move past this phase.' DAC proponents want to reframe the conversation about climate change and the role that carbon removal technologies can play in reducing emissions along with other mitigation efforts. As the climate crisis deepens, 'we will realize we didn't do enough to develop carbon removal technologies so that we have the tools we need to help ourselves," Merchant said. De Luna said he hoped 'ingenuity and innovation' would get the energy transition back on track and DAC could be part of the climate action solution. "With climate change, things are going to get worse before they get better. But will we be able to make things better with DAC and other carbon removal technologies? Yes, absolutely.'
Toronto Star
33 minutes ago
- Toronto Star
Is it OK to wear shorts in the office? We asked the experts
There is a silent debate raging in the workplace, an unspoken war of knees and shins and inseams and socks. There is sun, there is sweat and there are shifting concepts of what it means to be professional. There is one central question: Are shorts in the office acceptable? Some say absolutely not and others ask why not, and now, as June heads toward July, is the time to ask. The Star turned to a fashion designer, stylist, university professor and workplace culture consultant to get to the bottom of what's acceptable, what's not and how to figure out the difference. Don't like shorts? Blame tech companies — and the pandemic Michael Halinski says he has never worn shorts or sandals to teach at Toronto Metropolitan University, where he's a professor in the school of business management and studies workplaces and organizational change. He's not a purist, though. He has worn T-shirts. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW He said there's been a shift in workplace dress over the past 20 years, propelled by three distinct influences. The first is the rise of tech companies. From the Steve Jobs turtleneck to the Mark Zuckerberg T-shirt, Silicon Valley has embraced a more relaxed dress code and has, in turn, pushed other industries to loosen theirs. The second, Halinski said, was the pandemic. Working from home inspired more relaxed attire and it became commonplace to see coworkers wearing T-shirts or sweaters on Zoom calls. There's even a term for the video call outfit: the mullet. Business on top, casual on the bottom. Business 'Comfort is king': Workers are returning to the office but formal wear isn't following suit Joshua Chong There's also been a shift in the treatment of employees. 'People were robots. You were not allowed to show any empathy, you were not allowed to show any emotion,' Halinski said. 'The acceptance of differences, diversity, emotions … perhaps has allowed for greater acceptance of different dress codes.' It depends on the workplace There are still many different approaches. Carol Ring, an Ottawa-based workplace culture consultant, has seen rules that run the gamut. There are authoritarian codes with strong language and threats of disciplinary action, 'almost like parents scolding children,' and there are more trusting policies. The policy at Ross Video, a Canadian live production company, works with the mantra of 'dress for the day,' Ring said. A day spent in your own cubicle allows for casual wear. A meeting with clients demands more professional attire. If you're presenting to the board, you probably want a suit and tie. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'They trust their employees,' said Ring, a former Rogers executive. 'They empower their employees to dress appropriately.' TD has changed its dress code to be more relaxed when an employee isn't meeting with a client, Halinski said. Shorts are probably still frowned upon. Shorts can give the impression of a workplace that is 'loose and carefree and casual,' said Tracy Richardson, a media image consultant and stylist. That's why it matters if your job will be public facing that day or not. '(If) a client comes in, what it says is, this is a casual environment,' Richardson said. 'It can come across as not having respect.' Ultimately, you should read the room before wearing shorts to work, advised Michael Jafine, the Toronto-based head designer of Ahiri, a womenswear label. How to decide whether to wear shorts … Richardson believes shorts shouldn't be worn at work. For Jafine, it depends on the circumstances, but ultimately, he advises caution. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'For the men reading this article who have no clue about fashion,' Jafine said, 'don't wear the shorts. Don't do it.' Fashion Are shorts OK at work? Should men wear sandals? Summer office dress codes, decoded Sarah Laing Ring offers a three-step decision process. First, check the dress code, if there is one. Next, consider if you can perform your job safely in shorts. Finally, consider having a conversation with your manager. 'Just say, 'I'm curious. Under what circumstances would it be acceptable for me to wear shorts?'' Halinski suggests a simple rule: 'Dress the way your boss dresses.' … and how to pull it off If you've decided to wear shorts, Richardson suggests a pair of chinos or linen shorts, sitting just above the knee for men or a little higher for women. Avoid loud colours, Jafine said. '(Stick) to more neutrals, dusted colours, grayed-out shades,' he said. 'Classic silhouettes, something with a little more of a tailored approach.' But for those looking for a clear answer on the shorts debate, you're out of luck. It doesn't appear to be headed to a resolution. 'Will there be a time when shorts are accepted? I don't know,' Halinski said. 'I think there's always going to be this tension.'
