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Zoe has “never voted for Trump, and will never vote for anyone from his inner circle”, she said. But on a blustery Friday afternoon in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, the 24-year-old student walked through a cavernous US Steel plant to attend a rally headlined by the American president.
The trainee physician’s assistant gestured to Anthony, a millwright at US Steel’s Irvin Works facility, as she explained what had brought her there: “I just want job security for my partner and our future children.”
Jobs and investment were top of mind for many who attended the event marking the culmination of a long-running saga that began in late 2023, when Japan’s Nippon Steel agreed to buy the 124-year-old US rust-belt employer.
The $15bn deal, viewed at first as a win-win for the US and Japan, soon became a political flashpoint.
Donald Trump, then a Republican presidential candidate, slammed the foreign acquisition as a “horrible thing”. Joe Biden came out against it soon after.
US Steel is based in Pennsylvania, a critical swing state where Trump and Biden competed for blue-collar votes. In January this year, with just 17 days left in his presidential term, Biden blocked the deal.
A week ago, Trump appeared to back the “planned partnership” between US Steel and Nippon Steel in a social media post.
On Friday, he told a sea of orange-uniformed steelworkers and their families: “There’s a lot of money coming your way.”
The president went on to announce a doubling of steel and aluminium tariffs to 50 per cent, while revealing few further details of the so-called partnership.
Ron, who has worked for US Steel for 34 years, said the president’s reversal on the deal did not bother him. “He didn’t have all the facts” before, he said.
For many others at the rally, some in Maga hats and shirts, the promise of investment eclipsed any qualms they might have had about the Republican leader’s flip-flop.
John, a Trump fan who has been a maintenance worker at another US Steel plant in the Mon Valley for 23 years, said he thought the president changed his mind on Nippon’s bid after he “got more particulars about it”.
He said the deal was good news but had “some scepticism about what will happen”.
“Everybody changes their mind sometimes,” said Ben, a local Maga supporter whose son Tyler works at the plant. “Nippon kept sweetening the pot,” added Tyler.
Such sentiments fly in the face of the position held by the leadership of the United Steelworkers union. USW international president David McCall slammed the acquisition when it was announced in 2023 as a decision by US Steel “to push aside the concerns of its dedicated workforce and sell to a foreign-owned company”.
After the rally, which featured self-congratulatory speeches from US Steel CEO David Burritt and Nippon Steel vice-chair Takahiro Mori, McCall said: “The devil is always in the details, and that is especially true with a bad actor like Nippon Steel that has again and again violated our trade laws.”
“Our members know from decades of negotiating contracts: trust nothing until you see it in writing,” he added.
The split within the union was on display in West Mifflin, south-east of Pittsburgh, as Trump brought out local USW members who had broken with their leadership to support Nippon’s move.
James, who has spent almost 19 years working at US Steel’s Clairton plant, the largest coke manufacturing facility in the country, said he did not “understand why the higher-ups are against” the deal. “If we’re trusting in them, where will that get us?”
Another employee in the audience wore a T-shirt that sported his USW Local number, alongside the slogan: “American by birth, union by choice.”
Away from the rally, local opinion was more subdued. Earlier in the day, several service workers in downtown Pittsburgh said they had no idea that Trump would be in town that evening.
But for Steve Smith, an Uber driver who has worked different jobs in the so-called Steel City over the past 26 years and has family ties to the industry, the deal made sense.
While he expressed some doubt about the extent to which the agreement could revive the industry in the region, he said it was preferable to “another rusted-out steel mill”.
“If the crux of it all is that it’s keeping United States Steel in the US, I gotta be a player for it,” he said.