Trump now wields sweeping veto power over U.S. Steel. Here's how the 'golden share' works
President Donald Trump now personally holds sweeping veto power over U.S. Steel's decisions in key areas, according to an amended corporate charter filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
U.S. Steel says Trump holds what the White House calls a "golden share" in the Pittsburgh-based company. The amended charter, however, does not reference future presidents. Instead, it says the veto power passes to the Treasury and Commerce Departments as representatives of the U.S. government after Trump leaves office, according to the SEC filing.
Trump approved the controversial merger of U.S. Steel with Japan's Nippon Steel on June 13, after the companies signed a national security agreement with the U.S. and accepted the "golden share" arrangement. Trump opposed the deal in the runup to the 2024 president election.
Trump's direct involvement in measures to address the government's national security concerns is unprecedented, said Stephen Heifetz, a lawyer who previously served on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the agency that reviewed the U.S.-Nippon deal.
But it is also, arguably, all for appearances sake, Heifetz said. The Treasury and Commerce Departments, which will exercise the "golden share" after Trump leaves office, are arms of the executive and work for the U.S. president, Hefeitz said.
"We have a golden share, which I control, or president controls," Trump told reporters at the White House on June 12. "Now I'm a little concerned, whoever the president might be, but that gives you total control."
The golden share gives Trump, and later the Treasury and Commerce Departments, veto power over the following business decisions at U.S. Steel, according to the SEC filing:
United Steelworkers International President David McCall said Trump, through the golden share, "has assumed a startling degree of personal power over a corporation." The White House didn't immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.
Trump avoided calling the deal between U.S. Steel and Nippon a merger or acquisition, describing it instead as a "partnership."
But U.S. Steel is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Nippon Steel North America, and its shares stopped trading on the New York Stock Exchange on June 18 when the deal closed. U.S. Steel is scheduled to be formally delisted from the exchange on June 30.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
11 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Keir Starmer is in a hot mess - and I've never seen anything like it
Less than a year ago in Downing Street, the bunting was out, and Keir Starmer was walking into No 10 to a chorus of cheers after winning a landslide victory. Now there's such a rebellion from his own MPs, he's being forced to climb down on his welfare reforms. PM set to make serious concessions - politics latest For a prime minister to face such a challenge so early in his premiership, with such a big majority, is simply unprecedented. It is a humiliating blow to his authority from a parliamentary party that has felt ignored by Downing Street. How has this happened? The PM's entire focus for the past 12 days has been on international diplomacy. He's gone from the G7 in Canada, trying to deal with Trump, trade deals, de-escalation; then Israel-Iran, he was at Chequers trying to deal with that crisis; and then he was straight to NATO. You could forgive him for being pretty angry that those who should have been managing the shop back home have ended up in such an enormous blow-up with MPs. A PM needs to be able to trust his team when he's dealing with international crisis. As I understand it, a month ago up to 140 MPs signed a private letter to the whips warning they would not accept the welfare reforms. The whips told No 10 - and No 10 it seems stuck their fingers in their ears and didn't pay attention to it. But this is really draining on the PM's authority. Ultimately, he carries the can. What happens next? As I understand it, he's now looking at serious concessions in order to get his welfare bill passed on Tuesday. No 10 are considering whether they drop the PIP changes for existing claimants, and the health element of universal credit for existing claimants too. Speaking to me on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Labour peer and ex-minister Harriet Harman said she expects concessions to be enough to appease enough of the rebels. It will leave the chancellor needing to look somewhere else to make billions of pounds of savings. Read more: It's a hot mess, and it was avoidable. It has left very bad blood between the parliamentary party and No 10 and No 11. There's a lot of ire directed at Rachel Reeves at the moment too. For a PM to be facing such an overt challenge to his authority with a working majority of 165, less than a year into his leadership, having to U-turn because he's facing defeat? I've never seen anything like it.
New York Times
11 minutes ago
- New York Times
General Caine Faces His First Big Test Under Trump
In President Trump's view, generals are chest-thumping, tough-talking cheerleaders for the military and the operations he, as commander in chief, orders them to carry out. It's a view that often puts the senior military officers who serve under him in an impossible position. On Thursday morning, it fell to Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to meet Mr. Trump's expectations without politicizing the institution he serves. He did it by painting an earnest, at times florid, picture of the men and women involved in the attack this weekend on Iran's nuclear site at Fordo, and largely sidestepping the question of how successful the strike had been. General Caine's first big test began with a preliminary report from the Defense Intelligence Agency this week suggesting that the attack at the site and two others in Iran had set back the country's nuclear program by only a few months, according to officials familiar with the findings. News about that report infuriated Mr. Trump, who described the strikes in social media posts as 'legendary' and insisted that Iran's nuclear sites had been 'obliterated.' At the Pentagon on Thursday, Mr. Hegseth spent 10 minutes excoriating reporters as unpatriotic and 'irresponsible.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Boston Globe
15 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Centrifuges at Fordo ‘no longer operational,' UN nuclear watchdog head says
He said, however, that it would be 'too much' to assert that Iran's nuclear program had been 'wiped out' after the Israeli and American bombing campaign. Grossi noted that not all of Iran's nuclear sites had been struck and said Iranian officials had told him that they would take 'protective measures' for the uranium they had already enriched. Advertisement Still, he said, the nuclear program has definitely suffered 'enormous damage.' He declined to say how far Iran's nuclear program had been set back. 'Perhaps decades, depending on the type of activity or objective,' Grossi said, echoing comments made by President Trump this week at a NATO summit in the Netherlands. Advertisement 'It's true that with these reduced capacities,' he added, 'it will be much more difficult for Iran to continue at the same pace as before.' The comments from Grossi, director-general of the atomic agency, came amid questions over the effectiveness of the US strikes on Iran's nuclear sites. Trump has insisted that the bombing 'obliterated' the Fordo site, a position that some in his administration have On Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave more details about the planning and execution of the strikes. But they offered no new assessments of the damage inflicted on the sites or on the state of Iran's nuclear program. One of the main purposes of the UN watchdog is to monitor nuclear activity in Iran and other countries, including those who have signed on to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But the agency's relations with Iran were at a low point even before Israel attacked the country June 13. UN inspectors remained in Iran throughout the war but were not able to gain access to the nuclear sites amid the fighting. And it was not clear when or even if they would be allowed to do so again now that a cease-fire has taken hold. On Thursday, Iran's Guardian Council, which has veto power over legislation in the country, approved a bill passed by parliament that suspends cooperation with the UN watchdog and bars its inspectors from the country. Advertisement But the fate of the new law — which would effectively block the international community from having oversight of Iran's nuclear program — was still unclear. The decision to enact it lies with Iran's moderate president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who was elected on campaign promises to engage with the West and who has publicly signaled his willingness to return to the negotiating table. As a signatory of the nonproliferation treaty, Iran is 'required to have an inspection system,' Grossi noted in the interview. He urged Iranian authorities not to 'unilaterally' reject inspections 'because otherwise we'd be on the brink of another major crisis.' Grossi, who said Iran's cooperation with the UN watchdog before the war was 'limited,' said that he had reached out to Iran's foreign minister to discuss a potential return of agency inspectors to Iranian nuclear sites but had yet to receive a response. This article originally appeared in .
