President Joe Biden announced Friday that he will block the sale of U.S. Steel to Japanese company Nippon Steel.

The move, which will be one of Biden’s final acts as president, ends a planned $1.4 billion deal for Nippon Steel to acquire U.S. Steel, a company with major ties to the Birmingham area. Biden said U.S. Steel should remain a domestically-owned and operated company due to the importance of steel production to the nation’s security.

“As a committee of national security and trade experts across the executive branch determined, this acquisition would place one of America’s largest steel producers under foreign control and create risk for our national security and our critical supply chains.”
– President Joe Biden

Read on to see how this impacts Birmingham.

About U.S. Steel

In 1901—122 years ago—U.S. Steel was created by J.P. Morgan through the merger of Andrew Carnegie’s Carnegie Steel, Elbert H. Gary’s Federal Steel and William Henry Moore’s National Steel. Over the following decades, U.S. Steel grew to be the largest company in the world—at one point making 67% of all steel manufactured in the United States and becoming the world’s first company to be valued at more than $1 billion.

However, the company’s size has diminished over the years—falling from the world’s eighth-largest steel producer in 2008 to the world’s 24th-largest in 2022.

U.S. Steel in Birmingham

For over a century, U.S. Steel has had a formidable presence in Alabama—in fact, U.S. Steel was once the largest employer in Birmingham. In 1907, the Pittsburgh steel manufacturer acquired a controlling interest in the Birmingham-based Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCI). Through TCI, U.S. Steel owned the Ensley Works steel plant and constructed the Fairfield Works steel plant, which opened a new, $412M Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) in 2020.

Currently, U.S. Steel operates 2 locations in the Birmingham area:

Fairfield Tubular Operations
Fairfield Works

In addition, U.S. Steel Real Estate—a division of U.S. Steel—is a major land-owner in Jefferson County, involved in public and private development partnerships such as The Preserve, Trace Crossings, Ross Bridge and more.

While we don’t know what this means for U.S. Steel and its holdings in the long term, it does seem that for the moment the company’s significant presence in Birmingham will continue.

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