(The Center Square) – As the ink dries on the U.S. Steel merger with Japanese competitor Nippon, one state lawmaker breathes a deep sigh of relief on behalf of thousands of workers, most of whom she’s never met.
Sen. Kim Ward, the fifth-term legislator from Greensburg and the highest-ranking Republican in the upper chamber, recently told The Center Square the long fight to the finish line was a personal mission to protect the commonwealth’s legacy.
“It was our whole heritage and I know it sounds cliché, but in Pennsylvania, we build America,” she said. “This deal is going to change everything.”
As part of the merger, Nippon will invest $2.2 billion dollars into steel mills in southwestern Pennsylvania in what’s considered the most significant investment in the industry to date.
The company will also spend $200 million on a planned Advanced Technology Research and Development Center. President Donald Trump said another $7 billion is earmarked to modernize steel mills, expand ore mines, and build facilities in Indiana, Minnesota, Alabama, and Arkansas.
The bulk of expenditures would be made in the next 14 months, he said, and it will create and save more than 100,000 American jobs, including 14,000 in Pennsylvania. As part of the deal, U.S. Steel will maintain all its current operating blast furnaces at full capacity for at least the next 10 years.
“The Golden Age of America has only just begun, and together, we are going to make America great again, greater than ever before,” Trump said during a celebratory rally at a mill in West Mifflin on May 30, surrounded by workers, congressional lawmakers and Ward herself.
For West Mifflin Mayor Chris Kelly, Ward’s tireless advocacy brought the day to fruition.
“When you are a lone voice, it’s almost like you’re the squeaky wheel, but it wasn’t squeaky,” he told The Center Square. “She was the one saying, ‘Hey, I don’t know what you guys are missing here. Come on governor, come on Democrats and Republicans, this is for Pennsylvania.’”
Kelly praised the senator for being only state lawmaker to champion the deal, even as the Biden administration – under pressure from labor unions and domestic competitors like Ohio-based Cleveland Cliffs – made good on a longstanding promise to stop it in its tracks.
It’s also an about-face for the 47th commander-in-chief. When Nippon first approached U.S. Steel for an acquisition deal 18 months ago, Trump and then-President Joe Biden said the federal government should block it. Both wanted to keep the company domestically owned and operated, though the latter said unfair trading practices on the foreign market would hurt national security.
Biden eventually stopped the sale in the waning days of his administration. Six months later, at the pleading of state and congressional leaders worried about the economic and psychological fallout of losing U.S. Steel’s Pittsburgh headquarters, Trump said Nippon’s renewed promises took care of the workers most of all.
For her part, Ward said she never lost faith.
“I always had hope and actual confidence that President Trump would look at this and would work it and he did,” she said. “And he made that deal really so good for the workers and really so good for our whole region and he protected national security so that he could say yes.”
For critics of the deal, the timing of the investments is suspicious.
The United Steelworkers Union, led by David McCall, noted the details of the “partnership” sound the same as what was proposed in December 2023 in a deal the organization said would move jobs south to avoid collective bargaining. The 14-month timeline touted by the president aligns closely with the end of its current member contract, the union said.
“Issuing press releases and making political speeches is easy,” McCall said in a May 30 statement. “Binding commitments are hard. The devil is always in the details, and that is especially true with a bad actor like Nippon Steel that has again and again violated our trade laws, devastating steel communities in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
“Our members know from decades of negotiating contracts: trust nothing until you see it in writing.”
The union represents 850,000 workers across the country, including some from Nippon, of which 4,000 work in Pennsylvania, Alabama, Virginia and West Virginia.
Kelly told The Center Square that he, too, was first skeptical of the company’s plans, saying he’d never heard of Nippon before.
Then he decided to visit the company’s other plants, including one in West Virginia, and speak with employees. They said, according to Kelly, the region wouldn’t exist without Nippon.
“That created an eye-awakening event for me and made me focus on why is everybody against this,” he said. “And then I started learning more that there was an allegiance between Cleveland Cliffs and Dave McCall at international and no matter what we did, we weren’t going to convince him.”
For Ward, her focus is on the future and making sure the state Legislature gets the regulatory landscape in shape to support Nippon’s investments.
“The intention is to get a new mill keep all of these jobs keep all of the jobs depending on us steel and we need to keep it moving forward,” she said. “We don’t need to wait six months to a year for permits. Let’s get them their permits. Let’s help them through everything they need help with. We need to be their partner and not their adversary.”
