Nippon Steel completes takeover of U.S. Steel in $14.2 billion deal

Nippon Steel has completed its $14.2 billion takeover of U.S. Steel, the company announced Wednesday, capping a year and half of fraught negotiations and resulting in a landmark deal for a president who originally opposed the deal.

The agreement includes a “golden share” arrangement that gives President Donald Trump final say over key parts of the company’s U.S. business – including plant closures, headquarters location and employee salaries – as a way to ease earlier national security concerns.

Nippon, a Japanese steel giant, bought all shares of U.S. Steel for $55 apiece, valuing the transaction at $14.2 billion, corporate filings show. The company also plans to invest an additional $11 billion in its U.S. operations by 2028. Combined, the new company will become the world’s second-largest steelmaker, giving it a leg up in an industry largely dominated by China.

Nippon Steel’s stock price rose by 1.9% following the news Wednesday, although it is still down more than 7% from the beginning of this year.

“This is a significant deal both economically and in terms of the precedent it sets for foreign investment,” said Kristi Govella, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan think tank that focuses on national security. “And it shows there’s room for positive surprises from the Trump administration.”

The deal comes as welcome news, she said, for foreign investors who might worry that their offers would be blocked for national security reasons. Now instead of being shut out of the country altogether, there is a framework for a viable work-around.

But others warned about giving the president too much power over private corporations and industries. Nippon Steel said Wednesday that the “golden share” agreement will allow the U.S. government to appoint one independent director to the company’s board, and require presidential approval for key decisions, such as relocating U.S. Steel’s Pittsburgh headquarters, changing the name of the company, and moving jobs or production outside of the United States.

“This is a lot of government control, on a purely nuts and bolts, practical level,” said Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Although such arrangements are largely unheard of in the United States, they have been popular in the United Kingdom and other countries such as Brazil and Turkey since the 1980s.

The White House has hailed the deal as a way to protect the U.S. Steel industry. In recent weeks, Trump has doubled tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to 50%, to spur more U.S. production and create jobs, while protecting national security.

“Steel is the backbone of a modern economy and military,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an email. “The Trump administration is not only preserving an iconic gem of American industrial prowess with the U.S. Steel deal, but safeguarding the national and economic security of the United States.”

The acquisition has been divisive since it was proposed in late 2023. U.S. Steel executives have long lauded the takeover as a lifeline for a struggling company. But the labor union that represents U.S. Steel employees has argued the opposite, saying it is a good deal for U.S. Steel executives, not for workers.

On Wednesday, the United Steelworkers union president, David McCall, doubled down on that message, saying the companies had spent “vast amounts of resources into downplaying concerns regarding both the long-term future of USW members’ jobs and our national security.”

The union has also flagged specific concerns about Nippon Steel, saying it has a long history of unfair trade practices. In April, the Commerce Department ruled Nippon had “dumped” certain types of steel in the United States at abnormally low prices in 2022 and 2023.

Others, though, hailed the purchase as a lifeline for U.S. Steel, which posted more than $200 million in losses in the past two quarters. Annual sales fell 13% last year, and executives had warned they would have to shutter U.S. Steel mills if the deal fell through.

“U.S. Steel could not have survived on its own,” said William Chou, a deputy director at the Hudson Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. “This injects billions in capital and investments and introduces cutting-edge steelmaking technology to the United States. “And it aligns with President Trump’s priorities of remaking the trade system and reviving American industry.”

Still, economists and legal experts say it’s unclear exactly how this deal will play out long term, and what it will mean for future partnerships and investments from other countries.

“From the very beginning, there have been two very different views on the importance and significance of this transaction,” said Bruce Aronson, a senior adviser at the Japan Center of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute. “And we still don’t know what the implications are: Is it a very positive step for foreign direct investment and U.S.-Japan economic relations? Or is this just a one-off deal? We don’t know.”