Tag Archives: U.S. Steel

Selling A Major American Icon

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On Monday, The Daily Caller reported that Japanese Nippon Steel Corporation (NSC) is buying the United States Steel Corporation.

The article reports:

NSC will purchase U.S. Steel for $55.00 per share and assume the company’s debt equating to $14.9 billion, 40% higher than the company’s stock price as of Friday, according to a press release by U.S. Steel. The company was founded in 1901 in Pittsburgh by J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie through the merger of the Federal Steel Company and the Carnegie Steel Company

“NSC has a proven track record of acquiring, operating, and investing in steel mill facilities globally — and we are confident that, like our strategy, this combination is truly Best for All,” David Burritt, CEO of U.S. Steel, said in the press release. “For our U.S. Steel employees, who I continue to be thankful for, the transaction combines like-minded steel companies with an unwavering focus on safety, shared goals, values, and strategies underpinned by rich histories. For customers, U.S. Steel and NSC create a truly global steel company with combined capabilities and innovation capable of meeting our customers’ evolving needs.”

NSC will continue to honor all agreements between U.S. Steel and the United Steelworkers Union, pointing to the company’s history of working with unions. U.S. Steel will maintain its name, brand and current American headquarters, operating under NSC.

The Japanese have a record of managing corporations more efficiently than Americans do. It will be interesting to see exactly how the new owners deal with the unions.

Stay tuned.

Policies Have Consequences

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Yesterday Breitbart reported that U.S. Steel Corp. announced days ago that they are canceling a $1.5 billion project in western Pennsylvania. The project would have brought 1,000 union construction jobs to the region plus the jobs in the supporting industries.

The article notes:

“The lack of support, and frankly open hostility from some elected officials means the loss of four-million construction man-hours, approximately 1,000 full time union construction jobs and threatens in the longer term 3,000 steel workers,” Melcher (Tom Melcher, with the Pittsburgh Regional Building Trades Council) said. “It’s absolutely unacceptable that any politician or business or community leader who claims to be supportive of union jobs and a strong middle class can allow this project to be lost.”

Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), a populist who supported the project, wrote in a statement that he “will never understand why I was one of the only elected officials who pushed for this major project proactively and enthusiastically, while so many others turned their back on the working men and women of the Steelworkers and Building Trades in Allegheny County.”

As the unemployment numbers rise in America, we need to remember that government over-regulation is part of the problem. Unfortunately, the Biden administration and many of our blue-state governors like to be in control. We can expect to see more projects cancelled in the future due to over-regulation and changes in the tax policy.

More Good Economic News

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The following is a Press Release from U.S. Steel:

U. S. STEEL ANNOUNCES STATE-OF-THE-ART STEELMAKING TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENT AT MON VALLEY WORKS

PITTSBURGH May 2, 2019–United States Steel Corporation (NYSE: X) announced today it will invest more than $1 billion to construct a new sustainable endless casting and rolling facility at its Edgar Thomson Plant in Braddock, Pa.,and a cogeneration facility at its Clairton Plant in Clairton, Pa., both part of the company’s Mon Valley Works. The cutting-edge endless casting and rolling technology combines thin slab casting and hot rolled band production into one continuous process and will make Mon Valley Works the first facility of this type in the United States, and one of only a handful in the world.

“This is a truly transformational investment for U.S.Steel.We are combining our integrated steelmaking process with industry-leading endless casting and rolling to reinvest in steelmaking and secure the future for a new generation of steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania and the Mon Valley,” said David B. Burritt, President and Chief Executive Officer of U.S.Steel. “U.S.Steel’s investment in leading technology and advanced manufacturing aligns with our vision to be the industry leader in delivering high-quality, value-added products and innovative solutions that address our customers’ most challenging steel needs for the future. We believe that adding sustainable steel technology to our footprint will create long-term value for our employees, our region, our customers and our investors.

The installation of endless casting and rolling technology will give U.S.Steela world-class asset that will improve the quality and attributes of its downstream products for customers in appliance, construction and industrial markets. With this investment, Mon Valley Works will become the principal source of substrate for the production of the company’s industry-leading XG3™ Advanced High Strength Steel (AHSS) that assists automotive customers in meeting fuel efficiency standards. This project, in addition to producing sustainable AHSS, will improve environmental performance, energy conservation and reduce our carbon footprint associated with Mon Valley Works. First coil production is expected in 2022,contingent upon permitting and construction.

With this investment, U.S.Steel continues its more than a century-long commitment to innovative steelmaking in Pennsylvania. The technology will allow for optimization of the Mon Valley Works and other U.S.Steel facilities without increasing the company’s overall steelmaking capacity. The new endless casting and rolling facility will replace the existing traditional slab caster and hot strip mill facilities at the Mon Valley Works. Current and future employees will enhance their skills with more advanced manufacturing to operate and maintain the new facility through training programs developed in partnership with local universities.

As part of the project,U.S.Steel will also include construction of a new cogeneration facility, equipped with state-of-the-art emissions control systems at its Clairton Plant,to convert a portion of the coke oven gas generated at its Clairton Plant into electricity to power the steelmaking and finishing facilities throughout U.S.Steel’s Mon Valley operations.

Once completed, the new advanced steelmaking technology and state-of-the-art cogeneration facilities will incorporate the best available control technologies. Based upon current design and engineering data that is accompanying our air permit applications, we expect that the project will result in significant improvements in emissions compared to the existing facilities to be replaced, including reductions in emissions of Particulate Matter (PM) of approximately 60%, PM10 and PM2.5 of approximately 35%,sulfur dioxide of approximately 50%,and nitrogen oxides of approximately 80%. The project exemplifies our continued commitment to conserve resources and improve air quality in the Mon Valley.

Additional details on the investment, including an investor presentation,can be found at http://www.ussteel.com/MonValleyInvestment.

President Trump’s economic policies are working for everyone.

Good News For Indiana

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Yesterday Breitbart reported the following:

U.S. Steel has announced that they will invest $750 million at their 110-year-old steel manufacturing plant known as Gary Works in Gary, Indiana, crediting President Trump’s protective tariffs on steel imports.

…“We are pleased to be making this significant investment at Gary Works, which will improve the facility’s environmental performance, bolster our competitiveness and benefit the local community for years to come,” Burritt said in a statement.

“We are experiencing a renaissance at U.S. Steel,” Burritt said.

That manufacturing renaissance for U.S. Steel comes after decades of free trade policies which incentivized American companies to readily outsource their labor force to foreign countries.

…Already, though, Trump’s tariffs have created 11,100 American jobs in six months. There have been 20 times as many U.S. jobs created because of the tariffs than those jobs that have been lost.

This illustrates why it is good to have a political outsider who is a businessman in the White House. The political establishment and the State Department would never have had the courage to reverse bad trade agreements. America cannot afford to support the world by making bad trade deals–we have serious deficits that we still have to deal with. We need to remember that when more Americans that are working, fewer Americans are depending on the government to support them. That alone cuts government spending.

The economic growth we are experiencing under President Trump is a vivid example of the fact that economic (and trade) policies matter. The elimination of unnecessary regulations combined with a tax code that is friendly to business have resulted in a degree of economic growth that Democrats told us was impossible. We need to remember who said that this couldn’t be done and vote them out of office. We then need to vote people into office who will support economic policies that result in economic growth.

Much-Needed Change Is Coming

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The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about the changes being made to America‘s trade policy.

The article notes:

For those who follow closely the strongest argument against the U.S. trade and economic policies of the past 30 years has been the outcome. We don’t need to guess what the pro’s and con’s of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce position is, we are living them. We don’t need to guess what the Wall Street economy delivers, we are living through them.

For the past 30 years the U.S. has lost jobs, wages have been depressed, and the middle-class has suffered through the implementation of economic trade policy that destroyed the U.S. manufacturing base. None of this is in question – the results stare us in the face – yet the Wall Street and multinational corporate club(s) [U.S. CoC chief among them] now demand a continuance of the same.

It seems logical that if something is not working it needs to be changed. Somehow that has escaped Wall Street and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Actually, one wonders if the current program is working for the interests of Wall Street and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The article further states:

The truth is, well, two points: •Point #1 – the media don’t want to know; they are committed to selling the prior policy. •Point #2 – there’s almost no-one within the professional economic punditry class who have ever given thought to what happens during the space between two fundamentally different economic policies as executed.

What happens in the space between taking the U.S. economy off the path of ‘service-driven-globalism’, and reasserting the economy back to a balanced ‘production-based national economy’? None of the key participants within the larger discussion have ever contemplated this dynamic.

The article explains why Wall Street does not support changing trade policy:

When Main Street economic principles are applied Wall Street will initially lose. There’s no way for this not to happen. Most of Wall Street is built on the Multinational platform of economic globalism. Weaken the grip of the multinational corporations and financial interests on the U.S. economy and Wall Street will drop… this is not difficult to predict. This is also necessary.

U.S. stocks, centered around U.S. domestic companies, will go up. U.S. stocks, centered around multinational companies, will go down.

As Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S.T.R. Robert Lighthizer and U.S. President Trump have previously affirmed, they are going to restore the U.S. manufacturing and production economy -OR- lose office trying.

The U.S. Steel and Aluminum tariffs are just one component of the larger economic issue. Bringing back U.S. production on those sectors is vital to the infrastructure of a manufacturing and production economy.

Additional steps will come from exits of NAFTA and renegotiated trade deals with ASEAN nations, China and Europe. We either have a stable broad-base economy, or we follow the former path and eventually lose the country.

President Trump was chosen to lead America out of the economic mess of the prior eight years. It is interesting to see the amount of opposition he has encountered doing this.