WAS IT OVER WHEN NIPPON STEEL* BOMBED PEARL HARBOR?!
Of course, the deal could very well get a do-over, starting in a few weeks: To make America great, Trump can enable the Nippon Steel acquisition.
U.S. and Nippon reached their deal over a year ago, on Dec. 18, 2023. Fast-forward 12 months, and the Biden administration is reportedly planning to block the merger on national security grounds.
It should surprise exactly no one that an economically illiterate administration, which is headed by a barely compos mentis individual and has gravely mismanaged America’s relationships around the globe, might have failed to notice that Japan is a key U.S. ally and we’re 80 years on from World War II. Yet here we are, and it will be down to Trump to reintroduce a measure of rationality and sense to what has evidently been a flawed decision-making process.
In addition to missing the key tidbit that it is no longer December 1941 or even December 1984, critics of the merger have missed that this is not an acquisition of a U.S. company by a foreign government. Nippon Steel is a publicly traded company owned and controlled by its shareholders. Proponents of the deal underline that Nippon is already invested in numerous steel manufacturing facilities across America, including Standard Steel in Burnham, Pennsylvania, and Wheeling-Nippon Steel in Follansbee, West Virginia, and maintains headquarters in Houston, Texas. So, despite its name, it is already surprisingly American.
Why is the Biden administration so Japanophobic?
Related: Jim Geraghty on The Last-Minute Push from the Lamest of Lame Ducks.
* Yes, I know. But it made for a funnier headline.