It has been one week since President Donald Trump announced a “planned partnership” between United States Steel and Nippon Steel.
The late-Friday statement, sent out on Truth Social just before a long holiday weekend, was light on details but claimed that the deal would bring at least 70,000 jobs and $14 billion to the US economy—most of it in the next 14 months.
It seemed to signal an end to what has been a very long and, to be frank, strange path for a deal first announced in December 2023. However, despite a more than 17-month wait to get here and plans for Trump to host a rally today at one of U.S. Steel’s Pittsburgh-area mills in celebration, we still don’t really know what any of this means for the region, for steelworkers, or for communities like the Mon Valley.
What Really Matters
To anyone outside of the boardroom, the semantics of what you call the combination of U.S. Steel and Nippon – a partnership, a merger, an acquisition – doesn’t really matter all that much. What matters is how this will affect historic steelmaking communities, like the Mon Valley, and union steelworkers. After years of disinvestment, it’s understandable to feel hopeful when big investments are promised. But we still don’t know if those promises are real, enforceable, or if they will ever be fulfilled.
A combined U.S. Steel-Nippon could mark a whole new chapter for the Mon Valley Works and the region as a whole, but there are a lot of questions to be answered to ensure that Mon Valley communities benefit from what comes next. If billions of dollars are really coming to the region, we need to ensure that money supports workers, protects the environment, and helps local communities thrive – not just ensures corporate profits.
So, let’s look at how we got here and what questions we need to answer:
More Questions Than Answers
One of the big questions for the Mon Valley is, what does this mean for jobs?
In his announcement, Trump said the partnership between U.S. Steel and Nippon would create 70,000 jobs, which is an absolutely staggering amount of jobs to add and in need of further scrutiny. According to its latest 10-K filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, as of December 31, 2024 U.S. Steel had a total of 22,053 employees, which includes more than 7,000 jobs at its operations in Slovakia.
Speaking about the deal on CNBC on May 27, Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick said in the case of Pennsylvania, the deal “saves about 10,000 jobs—4,000 steelworkers and the surrounding jobs—but beyond that it adds another 10,000 jobs in the building trades to build a new arc furnace that is part of the plan.”
This leads us to another question.
While it was previously reported that Nippon had upped its planned investment in U.S. Steel’s operations to $14 billion and would build a new greenfield mill in the US, McCormick’s comments seem to imply that Pennsylvania could have already been selected as the location and his reference to a “new arc furnace” could mean that Nippon plans to build an electric-arc furnace (EAF) in the state.
But this then leads to another question. If an EAF mill is built in Pennsylvania, would this be to transition the Mon Valley Works to cleaner primary steel production produced via EAF using direct-reduced iron, or does this imply that a secondary, scrap-based EAF mill will be built in Pennsylvania?
If a scrap-based EAF will be built in Pennsylvania, what happens to US Steel’s current unionized primary steel operations in the Mon Valley? What happens to the Clairton Coke Works? Even if you eliminate coke from Mon Valley production, a larger proportion of the coke produced in Clairton feeds US Steel’s Gary Works in Indiana.
The United Steelworkers union, whose leadership has opposed the deal with Nippon from the start, sent an update to members May 28 saying the announcement raises more questions than it answers. They noted that they don’t know if the deal represents any meaningful change since Nippon’s merger proposal in 2023 in which it would make US Steel a wholly owned subsidiary.
“Throughout recent months, as the public conversation has turned to Nippon ‘investing’ in U.S. Steel or ‘partnering’ with U.S. Steel, Nippon has maintained consistently that it would only invest in U.S. Steel’s facilities if it owned the company outright. We’ve seen nothing in the reporting over the past few days suggesting that Nippon has walked back from this position,” the USW said.
The union also said it could not confirm how much of the $14 billion in publicly claimed proposed investment would be directed to union-represented plants, or how much “would go toward genuinely new capital improvements as opposed to routine repair and maintenance.”
The union noted that Nippon has not disputed reports that suggest up to $4 billion of the $14 billion would be earmarked for greenfield operations.
“Our members already know that our plants are not ‘greenfields,’ and generally that means non-union,” the USW said.
Another big question the union points out is the lack of details that have been provided about how or when this money would be spent over the next 14 months as Trump announced, with the USW noting this timeline aligns closely with the expiration of its Basic Labor Agreement in 15 months.
A Chance to Do Things Better
And of course, in all of this, we need to be asking what will all of this mean for the health and safety of Mon Valley communities? For generations, families in this region have lived with air pollution from steelmaking. And for just as long, people have asked: can we have good jobs and clean air?
We believe the answer is yes. With real investment and modern technology, the Mon Valley can be a competitive hub for sustainable steel—creating good jobs while cleaning up the air.
It’s good to see local leaders speaking up. Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato responded to the announcement by saying that “steel operations in the Mon Valley and reducing air pollution are both important to Allegheny County’s economic future.” Innamorato said the county wants “to see Nippon commit to investing in the workers and honor the collective bargaining agreements now and in the future; be a good community partner with Mon Valley residents and work with county and local government to build a future where everyone can thrive and invest in new technologies and infrastructure on site to modernize the campus, put local people to work, and improve air quality.”
What Comes Next
Given the many unanswered questions and the potential for empty promises, it is imperative to actively seek clarity and accountability. We all need to keep asking questions and demanding clear answers. Communities, workers, and local leaders deserve transparency and a seat at the table.
This could be a turning point for the Mon Valley—but only if the people who live and work here are truly part of the story.