As one of my university professors once said (and it’s stuck with me for half a century), “Change is the only permanency.”
On Friday, President Biden acted to block the acquisition of United States Steel by Nippon Steel Corp. of Japan, without acknowledging the changes that have already occurred in the steel industry, and which are likely to increase.
After more than a year of raging debate, it seems that nobody was convinced by arguments. Nippon’s worker-centered concessions, including safeguarding the jobs of U.S. Steel’s unionized workers and committing to more than $2 billion in investments for the aging plants at Gary, Ind., and the Mon Valley complex in Pennsylvania, were not mentioned in the president’s announcement on Friday.