I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life – seriously, like more jobs than most families have had, somewhere around 80 of them. Not careers, most of them, but retail, waiting tables, roofing, etc. In all my jobs, even the “real jobs,” as some people would classify them, I rarely knew, and never cared who owned the company. Why would I? I was working for money – working to live, never living to work – so who owned whatever radio station or website I worked for didn’t matter, that the checks cleared did. That’s why I don’t get why steelworkers union seems to care so desperately about who own US Steel when, at least to me, the only thing that matters is the people working there still have jobs.
US Steel has been in financial trouble for some time. Once the most valuable company in the country, those days are long since gone. As CNN put it just last year, “US Steel could be yet another iconic company for which time has run out.”
They described US Steel as “the subject of a bidding war among rivals offering a fraction of what the company was once worth.”
Well, someone stepped up and offered to buy it – Nippon Steel. They offered up $14.9 billion. If I were a US Steel employee, I’d breathe a heavy sigh of relief that the checks will keep coming. For some reason, this news was not met with the happiness I would have expected it to be.
I wrote at the time that I didn’t get it, and I still don’t get it.
That Nippon is a Japanese company seems to be the big sticking point. But they’re an ally. Even if they decided to turn on us, it’s not like they could order facilities in the United States to manufacture weapons to be used against us.
In following this story, I have seen nothing to explain this satisfactorily. If there is a US company, or even a billionaire, willing to offer more money, where are they? No politician has explained it, and there have been many, on both sides of the aisle.
Donald Trump said, “I would block it instantaneously. Absolutely.”
Politico reports the former president said, “We saved the steel industry. Now, U.S. Steel is being bought by Japan. So terrible.” Not much more, and no real explanation as to why he opposes it.
President Joe Biden has been publicly silent on the issue, privately saying it deserves “serious scrutiny” in December. Earlier this month, the president of the United Steelworkers International, David McCall, told the press, “Today we received personal assurances that President Joe Biden has our backs. He's always been a friend to the American worker and our union, and we're grateful he's taking an interest in this matter.”
McCall then went on to say, “Unfortunately, the proposed sale agreement between Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel puts our members' and our nation's interests in jeopardy.” He didn’t say how or why.
No one appears to have said how or why.
The USW has come out in support of another company, Cleveland-Cliffs, buying US Steel. Apparently, a clause in the US Steel’s union contract gives the USW the ability to make any sale difficult, to say the least. Axios described it as, “The United Steelworkers have a contractual right to bid on Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel, or certain of its assets, once they've been put up for sale” and they’ve transferred that right to Cleveland-Cliffs.
Axios also reported Cleveland-Cliffs “previously offered to buy U.S. Steel for $7.25 billion.”
The whole thing seems like a nightmare; a headache not worth it when you could just wait and pick clean the carcass of US Steel if it goes broke without a buyer. That would probably cost many, if not all the jobs there now, but what is Nippon supposed to do?
I don’t really care who buys it, I’d just prefer US Steel not collapse and lose all the jobs it currently has. The more the union makes a fuss, or politicians pander to that union, the more likely that negative scenario seems. But I am a firm believer in putting America first, which in this case is putting American workers first. If, at the end of this mess, they still have their jobs, it’ll be a win. And it doesn’t matter if the parent company paying those workers has a US address or one in Japan.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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