During the 2024 election, elites sneered at Donald Trump when he rode in a trash truck or served up fries at a McDonalds for campaign events. However, with President Trump returning to the White House, and Republicans winning control of Congress - the joke was on them. He connected with workers in a way that D.C. power brokers like Biden and Harris either currently cannot or never could in the first place.
From immigration to tariffs to jobs, President Trump understands making America great isn’t about helping powerful people, and it certainly isn’t about helping corporations. It’s about ensuring prosperity for American workers both now and in the future. We need more Americans working and investments into domestic industries.
However, American companies aren’t on board.
For a generation, at least, they’ve been more than happy to send jobs to China, or Mexico, or Vietnam, or anywhere but here. From ATVs made in Mexico to locks made in China to tools made in Vietnam, companies pocketed profits while American workers pocketed pink slips.
A recent report from the Boston Consulting Group noted that “Reshoring to the US Is a Clear Trend” in the last five years, as the economic outlook sours and more manufacturing comes back from China. That is good news. But it isn’t happening quickly enough. It is clear President Trump intends to fight to speed up the reshoring, and that is necessary.
Before he is even back in office, President Trump is taking steps to prevent workers at U.S. Steel from losing their jobs. Nippon Steel of Japan has been trying to purchase U.S. Steel for more than a year. The incoming President is making sure that the companies don’t make a deal that punishes Americans.
He is bending Nippon Steel to his will, forcing it to agree to employ more Americans and pay them higher wages. That's good. By the time he ends up waving the deal through, Nippon may just as well be an American company because there will be a better deal in place for the American workers at U.S. Steel.
Trump reveals his negotiating brilliance by staking out an extreme opening position. “I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!” he wrote on social media. In typical Trumpian bluster, he is already seeing Nippon come back to the table offering more and more incentives to make the deal happen. An additional $5,000 for each U.S. Steel employee. A promise to not move any work out of the U.S. A vow to invest billions in American cities and factories.
So, President Trump is off to a good start. In fact, he might even be able to convince Nippon to move more of its work out of Japan and into the U.S. After all, Japan’s aging workforce can’t keep up. With Nippon’s modern technology and the skilled American workforce, U.S. Steel should be able to grow and employ more people.
Of course, Trump could take a good thing - his negotiating tactics - a bit too far. “I am very frustrated with the news that came out last night,” a U.S. Steel employee leader said after Trump’s comments about opposing the deal. “I didn’t expect that to come out. So that was like a gut punch.” Another employee in Pennsylvania said 95% of employees there support the Nippon deal. They know that U.S. Steel may disappear if the deal doesn’t happen.
One reason the company is in such trouble is the failure of the Biden administration. The outgoing President said he wants to block the deal because he wants to protect a handful of union leaders, who seem to care about American workers even less than the corporations. President Trump knows he can help his blue-collar base simply by reversing this mistaken Biden policy.
So there is no doubt President Trump, the clever businessman and brilliant negotiator, will make a great deal with Nippon, which protects Americans. That deal will, as he likes to say, help make America great again. But a deal does need to happen, as we all know, in order to save U.S. Steel and make it viable for the long term - both for the corporation and its workers’ sakes.
Peter Mihalick is the former legislative director and counsel to former Reps. Barbara Comstock (R-VA) and Rodney Blum (R-IA).
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