# U.S. Steel The **United States Steel Corporation** was founded in 1901 when [[J.P. Morgan]] merged [[Andrew Carnegie]]'s Carnegie Steel with its rivals into the world's first billion-dollar corporation — a trust that at its peak made two-thirds of American steel, run for a quarter century by its founding chairman [[Elbert Gary]]. It sits in the vault twice: as the Gilded Age peer of [[Standard Oil]], the consolidation that fought the 1919 Steel Strike and drew Progressive-era scrutiny (and [[Ida Tarbell]]'s admiring 1925 biography, *[[The Life of Elbert H. Gary]]*), and, a century and a quarter later, as the company on which the federal government took its first **[[Golden Share]]**. ## The Nippon acquisition [[Nippon Steel]]'s $14.9 billion bid, announced in December 2023, was blocked by Joe Biden in January 2025 on national-security grounds after a divided CFIUS review, and then un-blocked by Trump in June 2025 on a condition no American company had accepted before: a single share held by the President carrying a perpetual veto over moving the headquarters, closing or idling plants, cutting the promised investment or shifting jobs and production abroad, with no economic stake at all. Nippon committed to keep the plants running through 2035 and Granite City through 2027. See [[US Steel Nippon Golden Share]] and [[CFIUS]] for the mechanics. The share was used within three months. On September 22, 2025, when U.S. Steel moved to idle Granite City, Illinois — about 800 jobs — Commerce Secretary [[Howard Lutnick]] relayed the President's veto, and the plant stayed open. The Harvard Law Review's assessment of the episode as a new "tool of statecraft" is the right frame: the golden share is state ownership without the state paying for it, exercised by the President personally, and its first use was to overrule a business decision for a political one. The United Steelworkers, never consulted on the deal, have asked for the commitments in binding form. ## Why it matters here U.S. Steel is where the vault's two industrial-policy stories meet — the [[Industrial Policy]] the right claims not to believe in, and the [[Golden Share]] as the instrument that lets a President run a private company by veto. Compare [[MP Materials]] (a guaranteed price and buyer) and the [[Defense Production Act]] (a wartime power in peacetime): each is the same move, and the steel case is the one with a clause in the corporate charter. ## See Also - [[US Steel Nippon Golden Share]] · [[Nippon Steel]] · [[Golden Share]] · [[CFIUS]] · [[Howard Lutnick]] - [[Elbert Gary]] · [[J.P. Morgan]] · [[Andrew Carnegie]] · [[Standard Oil]] · [[Ida Tarbell]] · [[The Life of Elbert H. Gary]] - [[Industrial Policy]] · [[MP Materials]] · [[Defense Production Act]]