With upscaled plan for Mon Valley, Nippon is 'absolutely living up to the deal' with U.S., Lutnik says

Once Nippon Steel's engineers started digging into the facilities that the Japanese steel firm acquired when it bought U.S. Steel Corp. in June 2025, they realized that $1 billion for a new hot strip mill at the Edgar Thomson plant in Braddock wasn't going to be enough.

The new estimate for the expanded scope of Mon Valley improvements is somewhere between $2 billion and $2.5 billion, U.S. Steel announced on Monday.

Much of that will fund the new hot strip mill at the Edgar Thomson, which, when completed by 2029, will replace an 87-year-old mill at the Irvin Plant. That facility will be decommissioned, the company said in a prepared statement.

The new hot strip mill, first announced in November, will have two new reheat furnaces, and a casting process that can make thicker, higher-quality slabs. It promises to be more energy efficient, improve product quality and allow for the production of more types of steel products, especially those geared for the automotive market. Also part of the investment is the previously announced new slag recycler, estimated to cost about $100 million.

The announcement comes nearly a year after Nippon bought the iconic American company in a $14.9 billion deal, with promises to upgrade and modernize U.S. Steel's facilities nationwide.

On Monday, U.S. Steel marked the announcement with a tour of its Edgar Thomson facility for U.S. Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was instrumental in getting the deal through the federal approval process.

It was finalized after more than a year of political opposition to a key American manufacturer being sold to a foreign company and hinged on U.S. Steel and Nippon signing a national security agreement with the U.S. government, which included a perpetual "golden share" in the company giving the U.S. president say on specific matters, including closures, company name changes and moving the company overseas.

Lutnick said Monday that so far the U.S. government has used that power "a little bit."

"A company's ordinary DNA is to maximize profit, right? And we have stepped in, and we want to maximize mission," he said. "When they're going over their books and their numbers, and they're thinking, ‘I can save some money by making a cut here or reduce something there,' then we're sort of in the mix with them... saying, instead of cutting, let's figure out a way to grow, to build."

In September, U.S. Steel announced it would stop processing steel slabs at its Granite City Works in Illinois, where its last blast furnaces had already been idled for years. The move was reversed within days, and in December U.S. Steel announced it was planning to restart one of the two furnaces.

Last month, Nippon announced that it would take direct control over U.S. Steel Košice, U.S. Steel's operation in Slovakia that employs more 7,500 people, has three blast furnaces and several rolling mills. U.S. Steel has owned it since 2000. In October, the business segment will be renamed Nippon Steel Slovakia and will become "a core hub for its European operations in its global strategy," Nippon told investors.

U.S. Steel's CEO David Burritt said on Monday that the move will focus U.S. Steel on "USA, USA, USA."

"With Nippon to have operations in Europe, it was a better fit for them to take responsibility," he said.

Lutnick said the way the U.S. government looked at this issue is through the lens of whether Nippon Steel is living up to the commitments it made under the national security agreement that contained Nippon's promise to spend nearly $11 billion on U.S. Steel facilities by 2028.

"The deal is $10.8 billion invested in American steel during our term, and so far so good," he said.

"The key to the United States of America's involvement is - I think the best way to say it is noses in, fingers out," he said. "That means we let them run their business. We just want to make sure that the mission is being achieved."

U.S. Steel assembled about 80 workers for the event, lining them up behind a podium under a blistering sun, in bright orange safety jackets and hard hats.

Lutnick's tour coincided with the release of an analysis by the Parker Strategy Group, which estimated that more than 6,300 jobs - both at U.S. Steel and at other companies - will be created over three years. It also projected that the investment of up to $2.5 billion will generate up to $58 million in state and local tax revenue.

The analysis is "based on projected construction and labor expenditures within Pennsylvania over an approximately three-year project period beginning in 2026," the statement reads.

"I was born and raised in the Mon Valley, and as a fourth-generation steelworker who began his career 36 years ago at Mon Valley Works-Irvin, this investment is especially meaningful to me," said Scott D. Buckiso, the executive vice president and chief manufacturing officer for U.S. Steel's North American flat-rolled segment.

Burritt said it's further proof that "We're here to stay - not for the next generation, but for generations and generations to come."

"All I can say about the way we do business in Pennsylvania [is] you ain't seen nothing yet.

"A world-class facility like this strengthens our ability to meet customer demand for steel that is mined, melted and made in America, while creating lasting economic opportunities."

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