Politics
GOP Sens Urge Treasury To Block Foreign Acquisition Of Iconic American Company
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Three Republican senators sent a letter addressed to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday calling for the Biden administration to block the recent deal between the United States Steel Corporation and Japan’s Nippon Steel Corporation (NSC).
NCS announced that it would be purchasing U.S. Steel on Monday at $55 per share and will assume the company’s current debt, equating to a total cost of $14.9 billion, 40% higher than the company’s stock price on Friday. Sens. J.D. Vance of Ohio, Marco Rubio of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri argued in the letter that the deal between U.S. Steel and NCS only considered value for shareholders and did not take into account the national security threat posed by a foreign company assuming American steel production, according to the letter.
“The transaction was not the product of careful deliberation over stakeholder interests, but rather the result of an auction to maximize shareholder returns,” the letter reads. “The joint press release announcing the all cash transaction led off with a declaration about the transaction’s ‘certain and immediate value to U.S. Steel shareholders.’ Despite the absence of any security-focused deliberation on U.S. Steel’s part, domestic steel production is vital to U.S. national security.”
The senators also criticized the NSC’s ties to Japan, saying the company’s “allegiance lies to a foreign state” and pointing out that NCS received more than $3 billion in subsidies from Japan earlier this year, according to the letter. NSC was also found guilty in August 2021 of illegally dumping flat-rolled steel products into the U.S. market in defiance of American trade law.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, of which Yellen is the chair, is expected to review the deal before it goes into effect, according to Reuters. Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Joe Manchin of West Virginia have also spoken out against the deal, as has the United Steelworkers Union, which represents thousands of workers at the company.
The Treasury did not immediately respond to a request to comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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