Steelmaker Proposes ‘All-American Solution’ for US Steel

[Stay on top of transportation news: Get TTNews in your inbox.]

HARRISBURG, Pa. — The bid by Japan’s Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel may have a new lease on life, even as the potential for a new bid for the storied Pittsburgh steelmaker began to emerge.

Lourenco Goncalves, the CEO of Ohio-based steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs, said in a news conference Jan. 13 that he wanted to make a new bid for U.S. Steel, which accepted the buyout offer from Nippon in 2023 after it rejected an offer by Cleveland-Cliffs.

Goncalves declined to give financial details about the bid, but said in a news conference at a Cleveland-Cliffs plant in western Pennsylvania that it is an “all-American solution” to save U.S. Steel. He said he would relocate Cleveland-Cliffs’ headquarters to Pittsburgh, keep the U.S. Steel name and make Cleveland-Cliffs part of U.S. Steel.

Over the weekend, the Biden administration extended a deadline for the Japanese steelmaker to abandon plans to acquire U.S. Steel after President Joe Biden blocked the deal.

Logo of Nippon Steel on the exterior of Blast Furnace No. 1 at the company’s Kashima Plant in Kashima, Japan. (Ayaka McGill/AP) …