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Zoe “has never voted for Trump, and will never vote for anyone from his intimate circle,” he said. But on a Friday Friday afternoon in West Mfflin, Pennsylvania, the 24 -year -old student walked through a cavernous US steel plant. Uu. To attend a demonstration headed by the US president.
The assistant of the apprentice doctor made a gesture to Anthony, a mill of the installation of Irvin of Us Steel, while explaining what had brought her there: “I just want job security for my partner and our future children.”
Jobs and investment were the most important thing for many who attended the event that marked the culmination of a long -term saga that began at the end of 2023, when Nippon Steel of Japan agreed to buy the 124 -year -old American oxide employer.
The $ 15 billion agreement, seen at the beginning as a mutual benefit for the United States and Japan, soon became a political inflammation point.
Donald Trump, then republican presidential candidate, criticized foreign acquisition as a “horrible thing.” Joe Biden came out against him shortly after.
Us Steel is based in Pennsylvania, a critical swing state where Trump and Biden competed for the blue neck votes. In January of this year, with only 17 remaining days in his presidential mandate, Biden blocked the agreement.
A week ago, Trump seemed to support the “planned association” between Us Steel and Nippon Steel in a publication on social networks.
On Friday, he told a sea of ​​uniformed steel workers with orange and their families: “There is a lot of money on their way.”
The president announced a duplication of 50 percent steel and aluminum tariffs, while revealing some more details of the so -called association.
Ron, who has worked for Us Steel for 34 years, said that the president’s reversal in the agreement did not bother him. “I didn’t have all the facts,” he said.
For many others in the rally, some with hats and Maga shirts, the investment promise eclipsed any repair that could have had about the flip-flop of the Republican leader.
John, a Trump fan who has been a maintenance worker at another US steel plant. In the Mon Valley for 23 years, he said the president changed his mind in Nippon’s offer after “he obtained more details about it.”
He said the agreement was good news, but had “some skepticism about what will happen.”
“Everyone changes their minds sometimes,” said Ben, a local defender of Maga whose son Tyler works at the plant. “Nippon continued sweetening the pot,” Tyler added.
Such feelings fly in the face of the position occupied by the leadership of United Steelworkers Union. The International President of USW, David McCall, criticized the acquisition when it was announced in 2023 as a decision of Us Steel “to put aside the concerns of his dedicated workforce and sell to a foreign property company.”
After the rally, which featured self -confacling speeches of the CEO of Us Steel, David Burritt and the vice president of Nippon Steel, Takahiro Mori, McCall said: “The devil is always in the details, and that is especially true with a bad actor like Nippon Steel who has violated our commercial laws again and again.”
“Our members know for decades of negotiation contracts: they do not trust anything until you see it in writing,” he added.
The division within the Union was exhibited in West Mfflin, southeast of Pittsburgh, since Trump took out the local members of the USW who had broken with their leadership to support Nippon’s movement.
James, who has spent almost 19 years working at the Us Steel Cloelton plant, the largest coca-cola manufacturing installation in the country, said he did not “understand why the superiors are against.” “If we trust them, where will that catch us?”
Another employee at the audience carried a shirt that wore his local USW number, along with the slogan: “American by birth, union by choice.”
Far from the demonstration, the local opinion was more subjected. Early in the day, several service workers in the center of Pittsburgh said they had no idea that Trump would be in the city that night.
But for Steve Smith, an Uber driver who has worked on different works in the so -called city of Steel in the last 26 years and has family ties with the industry, the agreement made sense.
Although he expressed some doubts about the extent that the agreement could relive the industry in the region, he said it was preferable “another rusty steel mill.”
“If the Quid of everything is that it maintains the United States steel in the United States, I have to be a player for it,” he said.
