HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) \u2014 The bid by Japan\u2019s Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel may have a new lease on life, even as the potential for a new bid for the storied Pittsburgh steelmaker began to emerge Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lourenco Goncalves, the CEO of Ohio-based steelmaker Cleveland Cliffs, said in a news conference Monday that he wanted to make a new bid for U.S. Steel, which accepted the buyout offer from Nippon in 2023 after it rejected an offer by Cleveland-Cliffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Goncalves declined to give financial details about the bid, but said in a news conference at a Cleveland-Cliffs plant in western Pennsylvania that it is an \u201call-American solution\u201d to save U.S. Steel. He said he would relocate Cleveland-Cliffs\u2019 headquarters to Pittsburgh, keep the U.S. Steel name and make Cleveland-Cliffs part of U.S. Steel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the weekend, the Biden administration extended a deadline for the Japanese steelmaker to abandon plans to acquire U.S. Steel after President Joe Biden blocked<\/a> the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The new deadline, now in mid-June, was viewed by U.S. Steel \u2014 and investors, apparently \u2014 as an opportunity for the companies to complete the acquisition, even though President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office in a week, also opposes the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biden nixed the acquisition this month citing a potential threat to national security, though the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS, failed to reach a consensus<\/a> on the security issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are pleased that CFIUS has granted an extension to June 18, 2025 of the requirement in President Biden\u2019s Executive Order that the parties permanently abandon the transaction,\u201d U.S. Steel said in a statement Sunday. \u201cWe look forward to completing the transaction, which secures the best future for the American steel industry and all our stakeholders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shares of U.S. Steel rose 6% in trading Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The proposed deal kicked up an election year political maelstrom<\/a> across America\u2019s industrial heartland and quickly drew vows by Biden and Trump from the campaign trail in a critical battleground state to block the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even after the election, Trump wrote on social media in December that he is \u201ctotally against\u201d U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company and said he would block the deal as president. He reiterated that stance this month after it was blocked by Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, a CFIUS composed of Trump appointees and Trump himself may be free to allow the deal to go through, or negotiate new terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dennis Unkovic, a Pittsburgh lawyer who works on international business transactions, including deals in which CFIUS approval was required, said a new CFIUS and a new president are not legally bound by Biden\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CFIUS giving the parties an extra six months to unwind the deal is unusual, Unkovic said. It wasn\u2019t immediately clear why CFIUS extended the deadline, but Unkovic pointed to reports<\/a> that Biden\u2019s CFIUS was divided over whether it was a security threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cExtending this from the 30 days to the 180 days was a sign that there were people in the Biden administration that would like somebody to take a second look at this,\u201d Unkovic said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CFIUS\u2019 job is to see if there are workarounds or modifications to a deal to allow it to go through, and rarely is a deal turned down, Unkovic said. After CFIUS takes another look at it, it could still be up to Trump to decide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNow how he comes down on it, who knows?\u201d Unkovic said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel have insisted that the deal presents no national security problem for the U.S., said Biden\u2019s decision to block it was a violation of legal due process and a political calculation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n