Nippon Steel touts the technology it might bring to U.S. Steel

Nippon Steel isn’t considering alternative options and is specializing in negotiations with the United Steelworkers union to win its support for the acquisition, the Tokyo-based company’s newly appointed president, Tadashi Imai, said at a press event.

“There is no company in the U.S. that can domestically produce the high-quality electrical steel sheets for automobiles that we produce in our steel mills in Japan,” Imai said in an interview conducted last week and might be published on Monday officially the highest job.

This technology will likely be available to US Steel following the acquisition. “We have over 2,000 patents in North America alone – far more than the other American steelmakers,” he said. “We can do a lot to strengthen US Steel.”

Imai’s comments come at a fragile time for the deal, whose prospects have been clouded by President Joe Biden’s insistence that US Steel needs to be “domestically owned and operated.” Biden has aligned itself Ahead of the autumn presidential election, there may be a risk that relations with considered one of America’s strongest allies will likely be disrupted.

Biden will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at a summit in Washington on April 10. US Steel shareholders will collect two days later to debate the Japanese offer.

Asked whether his company would consider changing the terms of the deal, perhaps by offering to take a smaller stake, Imai said that might be a call by the American company and never a call by Nippon Steel.

Former President Eiji Hashimoto, who initiated the takeover, is now chairman of Nippon Steel.