Now that a Japanese company has dropped its plan to buy U.S. Steel, Granite City Works in the Metro East remains in limbo.
President Donald Trump said Friday that Japanese-based Nippon wouldn’t continue its bid to buy U.S. Steel and will instead invest in the American steel giant, the Associated Press reported.
Earlier this year, then-President Joe Biden blocked the deal and Trump also remained opposed to it. Leaders of both major political parties objected to the nearly $15 billion deal on national security grounds.
Officials from both local and national steelworkers unions also opposed the deal.
Leadership at the union in Granite City could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday afternoon.
The fate of Metro East steel mill has been uncertain over the past few years.
Before the Nippon deal emerged to sell the entire company, a local energy producer, SunCoke, made an offer for Granite City Works’ two blast furnaces. Union leaders said in 2022 that the sale of the blast furnaces could cost the region roughly 2,000 jobs.
The local deal has since stalled but could be resurrected. Neither Nippon nor U.S. Steel leadership had made any comments about its intentions with Granite City’s steel mill amid the larger purchase.
Since the SunCoke deal was announced, U.S. Steel shut down a second blast furnace in fall 2023, which led to a few hundred layoffs.
