Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump promised to block Japan’s Nippon Steel Corporation from buying the United States Steel Corporation during a speech in York, Pennsylvania, on Monday.
“It’s an honor to be here at Precision Custom Components, a company that has helped build and defend America for nearly 150 years,” Trump said:
With the help of companies like this one, we will rebuild our hollowed-out defense industrial base — ensuring that America is never in a situation where we don’t have the tanks, missiles, and raw materials to fight and win a war. [Emphasis added]
Upon taking office, I will invoke the Defense Production Act wherever it is necessary to quickly ramp up capacity of essential products, and I will stop Japan from buying U.S. Steel. [Emphasis added]
As Breitbart News reported in 2023, executives with U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel Corporation announced a nearly $15 billion deal, which would have the iconic American steel giant sold off to the Japanese company.
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), has been a leading voice opposing the foreign acquisition of U.S. Steel. Vance, along with Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), John Fetterman (D-PA), and Bob Casey (D-PA), have warned of Nippon Steel’s deep ties to China.
The sale of U.S. Steel, founded in 1901 by Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Charles Schwab, to Nippon Steel is significant, as the steelmaker served a critical role in the nation’s “Arsenal of Democracy” during WWII.
Among several American companies that helped the Allies defeat the Axis Powers, which included Imperial Japan, U.S. Steel made the U.S. the world’s largest steel producer during the war, with Pennsylvania becoming the nation’s steel capital.
Trump also said, as president, he would end U.S. free trade with China to reshore American manufacturing and preserve American middle-class jobs.
“When I was president, we imposed historic tariffs, and prices did not go up,” Trump said:
Even Joe Biden’s own Treasury Secretary says the China tariffs do not raise prices for consumers. They hurt China, not America. That’s why the Biden administration had no choice but to leave them in place. [Emphasis added]
In my next term, I will revoke China’s Most Favored Nation trade status. I will pass the Trump Reciprocal Trade Act. If China or any other country makes us pay a 100 or 200 percent tariff, we will make them pay a reciprocal tariff of 100 or 200 percent right back. You hurt us; we hurt you. [Emphasis added]
Such a policy has the potential to create millions of American jobs, economists have said.
A study from the Coalition for a Prosperous America has found that a ten percent tariff on all imports to the U.S. economy combined with income tax cuts would create nearly three million jobs and raise real household incomes by almost six percent.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
