Trump greenlights Nippon Steel ‘partnership' with US Steel
Agencies
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday threw his support behind a new 'partnership' between U.S. Steel and Japan's Nippon Steel, sending the American firm's share price skyrocketing on hopes of an end to the long-running saga over foreign ownership of a key national asset.
While the details of the deal remained unclear, the Pennsylvania-headquartered firm's share price popped after Trump took to Truth Social to hail the new arrangement, closing up more than 21 percent and then rising further in after-hours trading.
'US Steel will REMAIN in America, and keep its Headquarters in the Great City of Pittsburgh,' Trump said in his social media post.
He added that the new 'planned partnership' between U.S. Steel and Japan's Nippon Steel would create at least 70,000 jobs and add $14 billion to the U.S. economy.
Trump's remarks are the latest in a long saga which began in December 2023, when U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel announced plans for a $14.9 billion merger.
That deal was bitterly opposed by unions in part because it would have transferred ownership of the critical asset to a foreign company.
In a statement, Nippon Steel said it 'applauds' the bold action taken by Trump, adding it shared the administration's 'commitment to protecting American workers, the American steel industry, and America's national security.' U.S. Steel praised Trump's 'bold' leadership on the deal, noting that it would 'remain American' and expand in size due to the 'massive investment' that Nippon would make over the next four years as part of the deal.
Neither the White House nor the two companies, have so far published the details of the new partnership.The United Steelworkers' union (USW), which represents U.S. Steel employees and has long opposed the deal, said on Friday that it could not 'speculate' on the impact of Trump's announcement without more information about the deal.
'Our concern remains that Nippon, a foreign corporation with a long and proven track record of violating our trade laws, will further erode domestic steelmaking capacity and jeopardize thousands of good, union jobs,' USW International President David McCall said in a statement shared with AFP.Nippon's acquisition of U.S. Steel was originally meant to close by the end of 2024's third financial quarter, but was then held up by former President Joe Biden, who blocked it in his last weeks in office on national security grounds.
Trump previously opposed Nippon Steel's takeover plan, calling for U.S. Steel to remain domestically owned. But he has since softened his tone and has suggested he is open to some form of investment from Nippon.
The U.S. president recently ordered his own review of the existing deal, directing the government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to look into the proposed acquisition.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Qatar Tribune
6 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Donald Trump faces uphill battle to sell tax cuts amid debt fears
Agencies President Donald Trump faces the challenge of convincing Republican senators, global investors, voters and even Elon Musk that he won't bury the federal government in debt with his multitrillion-dollar tax breaks package. The response so far from financial markets has been skeptical as Trump seems unable to trim deficits as promised. 'All of this rhetoric about cutting trillions of dollars of spending has come to nothing — and the tax bill codifies that,' said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. 'There is a level of concern about the competence of Congress and this administration and that makes adding a whole bunch of money to the deficit riskier.' The White House has viciously lashed out at anyone who has voiced concern about the debt snowballing under Trump, even though it did exactly that in his first term after his 2017 tax House press secretary Karoline Leavitt opened her briefing Thursday by saying she wanted 'to debunk some false claims' about his tax cuts. Leavitt said the 'blatantly wrong claim that the 'One, Big, Beautiful Bill' increases the deficit is based on the Congressional Budget Office and other scorekeepers who use shoddy assumptions and have historically been terrible at forecasting across Democrat and Republican administrations alike.' House Speaker Mike Johnson piled onto Congress' number crunchers on Sunday, telling NBC's 'Meet the Press,' 'The CBO sometimes gets projections correct, but they're always off, every single time, when they project economic growth. They always underestimate the growth that will be brought about by tax cuts and reduction in regulations.' But Trump himself has suggested that the lack of sufficient spending cuts to offset his tax reductions came out of the need to hold the Republican congressional coalition together.'We have to get a lot of votes,' Trump said last week. 'We can't be cutting.' That has left the administration betting on the hope that economic growth can do the trick, a belief that few outside of Trump's orbit think is viable. Most economists consider the non-partisan CBO to be the foundational standard for assessing policies, though it does not produce cost estimates for actions taken by the executive branch such as Trump's unilateral tariffs. Tech billionaire Musk, who was until recently part of Trump's inner sanctum as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, told CBS News: 'I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.'Federal debt keeps rising The tax and spending cuts that passed the House last month would add more than $5 trillion to the national debt in the coming decade if all of them are allowed to continue, according to the Committee for a Responsible Financial Budget, a fiscal watchdog group. To make the bill's price tag appear lower, various parts of the legislation are set to expire. This same tactic was used with Trump's 2017 tax cuts and it set up this year's dilemma, in which many of the tax cuts in that earlier package will sunset next year unless Congress renews them. But the debt is a much bigger problem now than it was eight years ago. Investors are demanding the government pay a higher premium to keep borrowing as the total debt has crossed $36.1 trillion. The interest rate on a 10-year Treasury Note is around 4.5%, up dramatically from the roughly 2.5% rate being charged when the 2017 tax cuts became law. The White House Council of Economic Advisers argues that its policies will unleash so much rapid growth that the annual budget deficits will shrink in size relative to the overall economy, putting the U.S. government on a fiscally sustainable path. The council argues the economy would expand over the next four years at an annual average of about 3.2%, instead of the Congressional Budget Office's expected 1.9%, and as many as 7.4 million jobs would be created or chair Stephen Miran told reporters that when the growth being forecast by the White House is coupled with expected revenues from tariffs, the expected budget deficits will fall. The tax cuts will increase the supply of money for investment, the supply of workers and the supply of domestically produced goods — all of which, by Miran's logic, would cause faster growth without creating new inflationary pressures. 'I do want to assure everyone that the deficit is a very significant concern for this administration,' Miran said. White House budget director Russell Vought told reporters the idea that the bill is 'in any way harmful to debt and deficits is fundamentally untrue.'Most outside economists expect additional debt would keep interest rates higher and slow overall economic growth as the cost of borrowing for homes, cars, businesses and even college educations would increase. 'This just adds to the problem future policymakers are going to face,' said Brendan Duke, a former Biden administration aide now at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. Duke said that with the tax cuts in the bill set to expire in 2028, lawmakers would be 'dealing with Social Security, Medicare and expiring tax cuts at the same time.' Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, said the growth projections from Trump's economic team are 'a work of fiction.' He said the bill would lead some workers to choose to work fewer hours in order to qualify for Medicaid. 'I don't know of any serious forecaster that has meaningfully raised their growth forecast because of this legislation,' said Harvard University professor Jason Furman, who was the Council of Economic Advisers chair under the Obama administration. 'These are mostly not growth- and competitiveness-oriented tax cuts. And, in fact, the higher long-term interest rates will go the other way and hurt growth.' The White House's inability so far to calm deficit concerns is stirring up political blowback for Trump as the tax and spending cuts approved by the House now move to the Senate. Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky have both expressed concerns about the likely deficit increases, with Johnson saying there are enough senators to stall the bill until deficits are addressed. 'I think we have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about the spending reduction and reducing the deficit,' Johnson said.
Qatar Tribune
6 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Trump withdraws nomination of Musk ally Isaacman as NASA head
dpa Washington US President Donald Trump has withdrawn his nomination of billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman as NASA head 'after a thorough review of prior associations.' On taking office in January, Trump proposed Isaacman, a close associate of SpaceX boss Elon Musk, to succeed Bill Nelson at the helm of the space agency, who left at the end of the presidency of Joe Biden. According to US media reports, Isaacman was to have been approved by the Senate shortly. But on Saturday evening, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he would soon announce a new nominee 'who will be Mission aligned, and put America First in Space,' without elaborating further. In an indication of growing distance from Trump, Musk responded on his own social media platform X: 'This sucks. I can't think of a better person for the job than Jared.' Trump's decision took observers by surprise, as he had praised Isaacman highly in December before taking office, saying he would 'drive NASA's mission of discovery and inspiration.' Responding to Trump's decision, Isaacman posted on X that he was grateful for the opportunity and said he would be cheering the president and NASA on. 'I have not flown my last mission - whatever form that may ultimately take,' he said. Isaacman has participated in two private space missions. In 2021, he was one of the first non-professional crew in space, joining three others on a three-day trip around Earth. In September last year, he was part of the Polaris Dawn mission alongside three other space tourists, undertaking a space walk. In both missions he collaborated with Musk's SpaceX. Citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, the New York Times reported that Trump had told associates he intended to 'yank' Isaacman's nomination after being told that Isaacman had donated to prominent Democrats. The decision was the latest example of how Trump 'uses loyalty as a key criterion for top administration roles,' the daily wrote.
Qatar Tribune
6 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Oil below $65 comes as boon for consumers, but burden on producers
Agencies U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs, his famous call to 'drill baby drill,' but particularly a decision by a group of the world's top producers to hike crude output quotas have oil prices trading at lows not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic. That is good news for consumers but not so much for producers, analysts say. A barrel of Brent North Sea crude, the international benchmark, stands below $65, a far cry from the more than $120 reached in 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine by major oil producer Russia. The fall in oil prices has contributed to a global slowdown for inflation, while also boosting growth in countries reliant on importing crude, such as much of Europe. The U.S. Consumer Price Index, for example, was down 11.8% year-over-year in April. Cheaper crude 'increases the level of disposable income' consumers have to be spending on 'discretionary items' such as leisure and tourism, said Pushpin Singh, an economist at British research group Cebr. The price of Brent has fallen by more than $10 compared with a year ago, reducing the cost of various fuel types derived directly from oil. This is helping to push down transportation and manufacturing costs that may, in the medium term, help further cut prices of consumer goods, Singh told Agence France-Presse (AFP). But he noted that while the drop in crude prices is partly a consequence of Trump's trade policies, the net effect on inflation remains difficult to predict amid threatened surges to other input costs, such as metals. At the same time, 'cheaper oil can make renewable energy sources less competitive, potentially slowing investment in green technologies,' Singh prices retreat, however, the undisputed losers are oil-producing countries, 'especially high-cost producers who at current and lower prices are forced to scale back production in the coming months,' said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank. Oil trading close to or below $60 'will obviously not be great for shale producers' either, said Rystad Energy analyst Jorge Leon. 'Having lower oil prices is going to be the detriment to their development,' he told companies extracting oil and natural gas from shale rock have already announced reduced investment in the Permian Basin, located between Texas and New Mexico. For the OPEC+ oil alliance, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, tolerance for low prices varies Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait have monetary reserves allowing them to easily borrow to finance diversified economic projects, Leon said. Hansen forecast that 'the long-term winners are likely to be major OPEC+ producers, especially in the Middle East, as they reclaim market shares that were lost since 2022 when they embarked on voluntary production cuts.' OPEC+ includes the countries members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies such as Russia. The 22-nation group began a series of cuts in 2022 to prop up crude prices, but Saudi Arabia, Russia and six other members surprised markets recently by sharply raising output. On Saturday, the countries announced a huge increase in crude production for July with an additional 411,000 barrels a day, the same target set for May and then June, according to a statement, which is more than three times greater than the group had previously planned. In recent years, the group within OPEC+ that is known as the 'Voluntary Eight,' or V8, had agreed to daily reductions of 2.2 million barrels with the aim of boosting prices. But in early 2025, OPEC+ members decided on the gradual output increase and subsequently began to accelerate the pace. Analysts say the hikes have likely been aimed at punishing OPEC members that have failed to meet their quotas, but it also follows pressure from Trump to lower prices. That is directly impacting the likes of Iran and Venezuela, whose economies depend heavily on oil revenues. A lower-price environment also hurts Nigeria, which, like other OPEC+ members, possesses a more limited ability to borrow funds, according to experts. But non-OPEC member Guyana, whose gross domestic product (GDP) growth has surged in recent years thanks to the discovery of oil, risks seeing its economy slow.
