PITTSBURGH -- The investment firm Ancora is pushing U.S. Steel shareholders to drop the Nippon Steel merger and oust CEO David Burritt, a move that would align with President Donald Trump's insistence that U.S. Steel stay in American hands.
It is unclear from its statement how big a stake in U.S. Steel the Cleveland-based finance company currently has.
In September, Trump said despite all of Nippon's broad promises, he is still set on not having a foreign company own an American one that is so central to national security.
"U.S. Steel was the greatest corporation in the world 70 years ago. It was the biggest, best in the whole world," Trump said, adding that "we have to bring that greatness back" but under U.S. ownership.
"We can't have foreign companies owning our steel companies where they can close it down in case there's a war in Asia," he explained.
A website published by the activist investor is, unsurprisingly, called "Make U.S. Steel Great Again."
In 2023, U.S. Steel shocked the region and the nation when it agreed to sell a company that was once the largest in the world to Nippon Steel for over $14 billion. It was a deal that former President Joe Biden blocked in January and one that Trump said in September he opposed.
In an open letter to the board of U.S. Steel, Ancora said it intends to rally shareholders, of which they are one, around a plan to oust U.S. Steel's top boss, Burritt.
The letter notes its deep roots in the Midwest and its affinity for industrial companies that are the backbone of America's economy. Ancora said that while it understands why the board explored alternatives in 2023, "its ultimate decision to ignore national security and pursue a risky sale to Nippon -- an overseas bidder that came in just $1 per share higher than a competing domestic bidder -- has led to a dead end."
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Ancora further attacked Burritt, saying he "has been allowed to misallocate capital, issue unreliable and overoptimistic forecasts, and repeatedly miss financial targets."
Ancora noted Trump is a vocal opponent of the deal and a long-term proponent of strengthening America's domestic manufacturing base.
"We see no reason to believe that President Trump, a high-conviction businessman who was elected by middle-class and working-class voters, is going to contradict his self-described 'America First' agenda and disregard the opposition of the United Steelworkers," the letter reads.
The controversial sale of U.S. Steel, once the gold star of American strength, to a foreign company rocked the psyche of western Pennsylvanians when it was announced.
The sale has also become a hot-button matter locally, with union leadership forcefully against it while many community and faith leaders believe that if the sale does not go through, the remaining U.S. Steel facilities will be vacated and cause more economic devastation in steel towns that have already struggled with steel's decline.
In 2018, Trump, then in the second year of his first term as president, blocked transactions involving China's ByteDance and Singapore's Broadcom from acquiring U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm.
"You can't let foreign countries -- where who knows what's going to happen with your relationship with the countries -- buy our steel plants," he said. "If there's a war, we have to make our army tanks, we have to make our ships, we have to make our everything. And can you imagine if we had to send away for foreign shipments for steel? So we can't do it."
Ancora is planning to oust Burritt by nominating and electing nine new directors to U.S. Steel's 12-person board. Ancora noted that its slate is not interested in selling the company but intends to rebuild it.
Earlier this month, at a press conference in Butler, Pennsylvania, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves said his company would not make a bid for U.S. Steel until Nippon abandons its plans.
U.S. Steel, whose headquarters is in Pittsburgh, employs over 21,000 people in the United States. At its peak employment during World War II, it employed 340,000.
The company was formed after a 1901 merger of the nation's leading steel companies, which included Andrew Carnegie's steel company. Carnegie's original steel plant, the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, is still in operation in Braddock, Pennsylvania, along Braddock Avenue, right across the street from Sen. John Fetterman's (D-Pa.) home.
U.S. Steel is not just culturally significant for Pennsylvanians -- the former headquarters along Grant Street in downtown Pittsburgh is the tallest building in Appalachia. The company has national significance as well. It is hard to note a significant building constructed over the past few decades that didn't include steel from the men and women who worked there.
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