(The Center Square) – Louisiana’s Ascension Parish will be home to a $5.8 billion Hyundai steel mill supplying its plants in Alabama and Georgia.
The announcement was made at the White House by President Donald Trump, Gov. Jeff Landry, and two Louisiana members of the U.S. House of Representatives – Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
Trump said the deal creating 1,400 jobs shows that “tariffs work” to bring jobs back to the United States. Trump said major expansions of the new plant are possible.
“We have tremendous interest in our country, more than ever before,” Trump said. “Hyundai is a great company. We have other great companies coming in and we have some that are going to be staying here and very much expanding. What it means is jobs. All we care about is jobs, right?”
Hyundai Auto Group chairman and CEO Chung Eui-sun said Hyundai had invested $20 billion in America since it entered the market in 1986 and that the steel mill, which will have a record $21 billion investment by Hyundai, is part of a move by the company to create a more reliable and secure automotive supply chain in the United States.
The plant, once completed near Donaldsville in the southeastern part of the state, will produce 2.7 million tons of steel for Hyundai automobile plants in Alabama and Georgia.
“We’re so grateful for our great friends with Hyundai to invest in Louisiana,” Johnson said. “We have extraordinary leadership at the state level and leadership makes a big difference. We’re so grateful to be a part of this. We want to tell you this is a great investment in Louisiana and America, with more to come.”
It will be Hyundai’s first steel mill in the United States. Groundbreaking is scheduled for 2026 and, if the plant receives regulatory approval, will open in 2029.
“In Louisiana, we’ll have $50 billion of construction projects by this summer. That is a record,” Landry said. “It has never happened under any other president, under any other administration and I can only look at the leadership that he brought, not only to the White House, but the world as well.
“We worked to make Louisiana as friendly for business as the president is making America. We worked on public safety. We worked on on education reform. We worked on tax reform, historic tax reform.”
