U.S. Steel, the Pittsburgh steel producer that played a key role in the nation’s industrialization, is being acquired by Nippon Steel in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $14.1 billion.
The transaction is worth about $14.9 billion when including the assumption of debt. The combined company will be among the top three steel-producing companies in the world, according to 2022 figures from the World Steel Association.
One thing is clear: Capitalists would sell their mothers, sisters and daughters to brothels if the money was good enough. The only concern in their minds is "how much can I get for it", with "it" being anything.
The ramifications of this deal for the U.S. economy, for the places where there are steel plants, for national security, none of that matters a flying fuck. All they care about is the money.
This is the biggest, bald-faced lie of all:
U.S. Steel executives were asked about a potential pushback from U.S. regulators over security concerns on Monday. “This is going to increase competition here in the United States with a great ally to the United States,” answered U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt.
I cannot think of a solitary example where one large company merging with another to become even bigger increased competition in any industry. It's quite the opposite.
5 comments:
Let's not forget what's important here. Shareholder value and 3 month earnings. I'd say the CEO and the BOD hit it out of the park.
Do WE (USA/America) make steel anymore?
Eck!
Over 100 million tons/year of steel and pig iron. So, yes.
And over 200,000 workers in steel mills and foundries.
My first job out of school was with Armco Steel. Some grist for the mill so to speak.
Asian geopolitics is often described in terms of two giants: America, the incumbent superpower, and China, a rising one, standing astride the region and competing to pull smaller countries to their sides, including the ten members of asean, the Association of South-East Asian Nations. But this misses a lot. It elides smaller countries’ agency and oversimplifies what is rarely a Manichaean divide. It also ignores the pivotal role of another rich power with strong ties: Japan.
For many South-East Asian countries, Japan offers a vital hedge against the rival powers, as a source of capital, technology and aid. Over the past decade, Japanese foreign direct investment into asean countries has totalled $198bn, behind America’s $209bn, but beating China’s $106bn. Japanese firms covet South-East Asia’s growing markets, and policymakers see the region as a bulwark against Chinese expansionism. Sustained engagement, from mediating regional conflicts to building regional institutions, has helped Japan accumulate substantial influence. According to a survey of South-East Asian researchers, businesspeople and policymakers by the iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, Japan is the region’s most trusted outside partner.
https://econ.st/3TBms4X
The Japanese may have reason to invest in new methods of steel making.
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Steelmakers around the world hope to decarbonise by changing the way they pluck oxygen from iron-oxide ores. This is done using either carbon monoxide (CO) derived indirectly from coke in a blast furnace, or by “direct reduction” with syngas, a mixture of CO and hydrogen.
Both create carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. As a consequence, steelmaking is reckoned responsible for about 9% of man-made greenhouse-gas emissions. A widespread aspiration is thus to introduce direct reduction by hydrogen alone. The only by-product of such a reaction would be water (or rather, steam).
Clever. But, thinks Tadeu Carneiro, not clever enough. Mr Carneiro runs Boston Metal, a firm based not in Boston, but rather in Woburn, 17km to the north-west. Employing the insights of Donald Sadoway of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston Metal has created a way of separating iron from its ore by electrolysis. Instead of releasing CO2 or steam, its approach produces pure oxygen—which is not merely harmless, but actually valuable.
Electrolytic separation of metals from their oxides is not new. Aluminium is made this way. But the process uses carbon electrodes, and the oxygen liberated at the anode reacts with this carbon to generate CO2. Boston Metal employs, instead, anodes made of chromium, iron and a secret mix of other metals in an alloy that does not react with oxygen. The other electrode, the cathode, is the liquid metal itself.
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/05/31/there-is-more-than-one-way-to-make-green-steel
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