Steel companies sue Biden for blocking merger

U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel on Monday said they were filing two lawsuits against the administration after U.S. President Joe Biden last week blocked their merger. The companies insisted that the proposed merger would enhance U.S. national security, not threaten it as Biden claimed.

Furthermore, the merger would revitalize American communities dependent on steel manufacturing, increase American steel manufacturing, and protect U.S. supply chains from China, the companies said. But when he blocked the merger last week, Biden said it was in America’s best interests to keep the ownership and operations of the majority of its steel manufacturing domestic.

What are the two lawsuits about? In their first legal action, U.S. Steel, Nippon Steel, and Nippon Steel’s North American subsidiary asked a Washington, D.C. appeals court to block the transaction. They alleged that the government’s review of the transaction and Biden’s decision to block the transaction both violated the companies’ due process rights.

In the second legal action, the companies asked a federal court in Pennsylvania for an expedited hearing on allegations that another U.S. company, Cleveland-Cliffs, and United Steelworkers President David McCall engaged in racketeering and anticompetitive activities to prevent Nippon from purchasing U.S. Steel.

Cleveland-Cliffs issued a statement saying that Nippon and U.S. Steel’s lawsuit was an attempt to blame other entities for their own mistakes. United Steelworkers President David McCall said in a statement provided to WORLD that the accusations against him were baseless. He also affirmed that Biden’s decision to block the merger with Nippon was in the United States’ best interests.

Dig deeper: Listen to David Bahnsen’s critique of the government’s decision to block Nippon from purchasing U.S. Steel on The World and Everything in It podcast.