President Joe Biden has blocked a $14.3 billion acquisition of US Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, marking a significant use of executive authority in the closing days of his administration.
The merger has been politically charged since it was announced in December 2023, stirring bipartisan political opposition to foreign control of a once key component of US industrial might.
US Steel was created in 1901 when a group led by J.P. Morgan and Charles Schwab, two of the world’s leading financiers of the time, bought the steel company owned by Andrew Carnegie and combined it with their holdings in its rival Federal Steel company. The new company became the world’s first to be valued at more than $1 billion, double the entire US budget that year. The deal made owner Andrew Carnegie the richest man in the world.
In the early part of the last century, the company produced the steel that helped the United States become a global economic superpower, providing steel not just for skyscrapers, bridges and dams, but also for autos, appliances and other products craved by American consumers.
