PITTSBURGH —
Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 anchor Andrew Stockey sat down with Republican Senator Dave McCormick prior to his event in Pittsburgh’s South Park neighborhood Monday.
Among the topics he discussed with us: The Nippon Steel merger, what exactly the Golden Share was and his relationship with Senator John Fetterman.
The U.S. Steel and Nippon merger has been approved by the president and signed off on by both companies.
Even with the deal being done, there are still many questions.
“It seems to me that it’s such an obvious great thing. And I, you know, people saying, ‘but what about this? What about that?’ I say, what about this? What about this is this partnership resulted in $14 billion of new investment in U.S. Steel, $2.4 billion of that in the valley for a new arc furnace. It has guarantees for our workforce to increase production, to keep or increase production levels. So every person working in the Mon Valley can say, okay, I get the next decade or more in front of me,” McCormick said.
President Donald Trump would have a unique influence over the operations of U.S. Steel under the terms of what the White House calls an “investment” being made by Japan-based Nippon Steel in the iconic American steelmaker.
Administration officials over the past few days provided additional insight into the “golden share” arrangement that the federal government made as a condition for supporting the deal. We asked McCormick what it all meant:
“It puts U.S. Steel in Pennsylvania headquarters, a management team that (has) an American CEO, a majority leader of the board. And then a relatively common thing which the golden share is the idea that the U.S. government is able to influence the selection of board members. So they have control over key strategic decisions,” McCormick said.
The bill to move the portion of the Department of Energy to our region is the latest chapter in a rare show of bipartisanship between senators Fetterman and McCormick.
Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 asked McCormick about the unique partnership.
“I think (my Republican colleagues) see it as a good example. You know, when, recently, Senator Fetterman, was attacked — really viciously. He had, like an orchestrated campaign that was like one bad story after another about his staff, his health, all these very nasty articles and no one was coming out in support of it. So I texted him and then called him and said, ‘Hey, I, I’d like to come out and support you, but I don’t want to hurt you politically. What do you think?’ And he said, ‘yeah, come on, come on out because no one else is,'” McCormick said.