What I learned about ‘America First’ in a Pennsylvania steel mill.
Salena Zito is a columnist for the Washington Examiner.
WEST MIFFLIN, Pennsylvania — The steep climb in the truck up from the Monongahela River to the entrance of the Mon Valley Works Irvin Plant is a picturesque reminder of just how much earth had to be moved for the 650 acres of wall-to-wall steel production to be built.
After a series of check-ins and a maze of buildings, plant manager Don German is there at Building B to greet me for a tour, a rare invitation for a journalist. After gearing up in a hard hat, safety glasses, a heavy, bright orange jacket with the blue-and-white U.S. Steel emblem on the back, German begins with the plant’s history. Legend has it, he said, that they needed more cubic yards of dirt to construct it in the 1930s than was used to build the Panama Canal.
The bright orange of the molten steel, the heat, the soot, the constant movement, the smell of hot machinery and a hum so loud you have to yell to communicate — these are all token that you stand in the presence of something being made, something huge. It takes only seconds for the hot steel strip to travel 300 feet when it exits its last stand through the sprays and emerges as a massive coil ready to be transformed into the material undergirding our everyday lives, from SUVs to building frames; 850 people at the Irvin Plant supply this raw material.
Steelworkers wait to band hot rolled steel as it comes off of the hot-strip mill at the Irvin Plant on March 19.
The oldest hot mill in the United States, built in 1938, operates inside the Irvin Plant.
I’m visiting because the plant is at the center of President Donald Trump’s early second-term agenda. It’s a major employer in a state where a red shift among blue-collar workers powered his two election victories. It’s protected by rising tariffs, which now stand at 25 percent on steel under the president’s latest order. And its owner, U.S. Steel, is engaged in intense negotiations over a potential sale to Nippon Steel — a similarly iconic Japanese brand — in which Trump is involved as a broker.
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I wanted to hear from the employees themselves, many of whom have multigenerational ties to the facility, about their hopes and fears and what the often bloodless business headlines mean to communities whose identity is wrapped in steel, who consider their work part of the fabric of the nation itself.
What I found was a nuanced conversation, one that’s divided workers, unions, politicians and investors over the future of American steel. And a debate in which the “America First” position, according to the workers whose gloved hands actually touch the steel, might mean welcoming Japanese cash and leadership rather than shutting the company off from the world.
A surprise offer
Inside a tiny conference room, German and I met with the top local union leaders: USW Local 2227 President Jack Maskil, Vice President Jason Zugai and Safety Chairman Gary Pickett. Their combined tenure at this plant add up close to the 124 years that U.S. Steel has been in existence.
At stake in the proposed sale to Nippon is their livelihoods — and their outlook is not what many people might assume.
The two steel companies stunned local elected officials, union members, and the White House with their joint announcement in December 2023 of an agreement for Nippon to acquire U.S. Steel in an all-cash transaction at $55 per share, or $14.1 billion. None — not management, not labor, not the Biden administration — saw it coming.
“Woke up on a Sunday morning and next thing you know, phone’s blowing up,” Maskil said. “What’s going on? What’s going on? I’m like, wait, what are we talking about here?”
Maskil and Zugai fielded calls for days. The initial reaction among workers was near-uniform opposition. Pennsylvanians still remember Japan’s reputation for “dumping” cheap materials into the United States in the 1970s while steel mills in the area closed. Maskil, though, said he was mostly just processing his shock that the sale had even been a possibility.
While the workers sought information, national leaders made their objections known. United Steelworkers came out against the deal, warning that the union couldn’t trust Nippon to honor labor contracts. President Joe Biden opposed the deal on national security grounds. Vice President Kamala Harris also announced her opposition after becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, saying she would “always have the backs of America’s steelworkers.”
Over time, though, the steelworkers in question began to change their tune. Nippon made a $1 billion pledge to upgrade the plant with a new hot strip mill, replacing its nearly 90-year-old infrastructure — a move that many workers thought was needed to keep up with more advanced foreign competitors.
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“To be honest with you, at first I was skeptical just like everybody else was, but through the process, as time went on, we learned more and more, and as time went on, more and more investment opportunities became available,” Maskil said. “Unfortunately we are — how should I say it? I refer to it as flipping the hourglass. So we are on a strict time frame, if this investment does not go through, if this deal doesn’t see through.”
The room got quiet. It was clear everything was on the line.
Within fairly short order, Maskil, Zugai and Pickett said they had met with their union workers at the three facilities that make up the Mon Valley Works: their plant, the Clairton Coke Works six miles down the river and the Edgar Thomson Plant in Braddock nine miles upriver. After much deliberation, they decided to support the sale.
“When the deal to sell to Nippon was first announced, 95 percent of the rank and file did not want it to happen,” Zugai explained. “Now, 95 percent of them do.”
Clairton Coke Works in Clairton, Pennsylvania, on March 19.
German, the one member of management in the room, interrupted: “I think what he is saying is important; while everyone was reacting to the announcement, these three did a phenomenal job of collecting the facts, communicating with the rank and file and ultimately understanding the benefits of the deal.”
It is a complex situation for all of these men, beginning with the fact that the local union remains at odds with the United Steelworkers International, whose Cleveland-based leader David McCall has denounced the sale, saying he has no faith in Nippon to make good on its guarantees and investments.
Maskil acknowledged that the local and national union leaders are not aligned. “But we were elected to fight for the guys, the men and women out on that floor, and this is what they want. Not only what we want but what they want,” he said.
In December, hundreds of local members rallied outside the plant desperately asking the Biden White House to approve the Nippon purchase; the appeal was also aimed at their own recalcitrant international union leadership.
At the same time, many of these steelworkers supported Trump’s 2024 campaign — so much so they stood behind him at rallies in Latrobe and Pittsburgh in their gear. Trump shared Biden’s initial skepticism toward Nippon Steel; they hoped to bring him toward their side by touting a deal as a win for the workers who embodied his coalition.
Asked how one can be “America First” while supporting a Japanese company owning a historic American company, Maskil did not hold back.
“To be blunt? Yeah. I don’t care what this company’s called,” he said. “We’ve said that from Day 1 it doesn’t matter who buys us. Our concern is whoever buys us honors our current basic labor agreement moving forward as well as [that] they’re prepared to put the investments into the corporation that we not only want but we have to have in order to sustain employment here.”
Their entreaties did not move the Biden administration. Throughout the year, the president railed against the sale, often to the frustration of some on his staff. In the waning days of his presidency, Biden moved to block the sale after federal regulators deadlocked on whether to approve it.
Trump, at the time, was still against it as well. After taking office, though, he looked to revive talks. In February, after meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba at the White House, Trump said Nippon Steel would instead be heavily investing in the company without a majority stake. Since then, discussions among Trump, Nippon, U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have been going on at a furious pace with a goal to reach a partnership.
All four steelworkers at the Irvin Plant said there are so many reasons this deal needs to happen — but, most important, they’ve all seen what it looks like when the investment dries up.
The ghosts of steel mills past
Pickett, the plant safety chairman on the union side, told me that if this place is gone — if Edgar Thomson and Clairton are gone — it’s not just the product they make here that goes. It’s also the heart of the community — from the churches to the schools to the tax base — that will be torn apart.
“Take a look,” Pickett said. “I grew up in McKeesport. I was born and raised in McKeesport. When I grew up, downtown McKeesport was booming. We had three movie theaters, a beautiful upscale hotel, multilevel department stores. Ride through it now. You got a hot dog shop. I wouldn’t stop there if you paid me, and I was born and raised there. I mean, that’s all from the mill shutting down.”
McKeesport once was so politically significant that John F. Kennedy visited twice: once to debate the Taft-Hartley Act with then fellow Rep. Richard M. Nixon and once to campaign for president against him.
The city has declined dramatically. Deindustrialization has hollowed out the working class. Those who could not get out now struggle to support a family. Crime has increased; several years ago, a study from the National Council for Home Safety and Security named it one of the most dangerous cities in the United States.
McKeesport is not alone.
The Jones and Laughlin Steel plant once stretched for seven miles along the riverfront in Aliquippa, Beaver County, at one time the largest steel mill in the world. It is almost all demolished. Gone, and with it the 10,000 union workers who labored there. Aliquippa’s population has dropped from 22,000 in 1970 to 9,000 today.
Duquesne Steel once hosted a 12-open-hearth furnace that fed a giant four-mill rolling complex heralded as the technology hub of its day. But the city of Duquesne died hard when the industry collapsed — locals tried desperately to stop the tearing down of the iconic “Dorothy Six” furnace. Now fewer people live here than worked at the mill in its prime.
For those with roots here, it’s clear how this movie can end.
“People look at those buildings, and they feel a kinship: Maybe their uncle worked there, maybe their dad or grandfather. It leaves a mark, and it impacts culture and politics, and I think someone that isn’t from around here isn’t going to understand,” Pickett said. “No matter in which direction you drive, you understand the impact bad trade deals and tariffs had on their families and communities’ lives.”
Shoots of hope
That said, steel itself and some former mill towns here do still survive, even after some near-death experiences.
Several counties east, in the Conemaugh Valley, the city of Johnstown cuts a little differently than McKeesport, Aliquippa and Duquesne.
It lost nearly 12,000 jobs when the massive Bethlehem Steel plant suffered through years of layoffs and then finally closed. Its population too has dropped, staggeringly, from around 67,000 in 1920 to under 18,000 today. But the community has new activity in the massive former plant, thanks to Bill Polacek, whose father started a one-man welding shop called “Johnny’s Welding” in his garage as a side hustle to his job at Bethlehem Steel.
That side hustle is now inside 500,000 square feet of what was Bethlehem Steel’s Lower Works. Polacek has revamped the mill, changed the name of the company to JWF Industries and expanded to supplying defense contractors with well-made, sustainable fabrications and subassemblies.
He employs well over 400 people, and the place is humming with workers, most of them young, working on parts for military Humvees and tanks and other defense items I cannot mention. Polacek, who just named his son president of the company, has a trade apprentice program on-site for those willing to learn.
One of his suppliers is U.S. Steel, which Polacek uses in multiple military applications. He said he is deeply concerned about what will happen if the deal with Nippon falls through or if Trump is unable to forge a partnership between the three competing interests.
“If U.S. Steel unravels, a couple things will happen,” he said. “No. 1, steel’s [cost is] going to go up dramatically as a lot of supply and demand kick in; 2, we are going to be forced to buy foreign steel.”
Then, he said, comes the psychological effect. “U.S. Steel, the dominant steel producer, gone? The American company?” he asked, his voice rising.
Polacek said it would make everything more expensive for his customers: “And it also makes us less competitive on an international basis. Now, my costs go up, my customers’ costs go up. And then, when they make something or produce something, it gets sold to a foreign country — we lose that competitive edge.”
The Trump effect
There have been a hundred stories from 30,000 feet looking at how Democrats lost the support of the working class and union voters — if you lived through it and around it, as I have, as these men have, it has been gradual, painful and inevitable.
Trump spoke to them about the things they cared about: the border, the economy and, most important of all, tariffs — which in this part of the country means their jobs are not on the “loser” side when people more powerful than them pick winners and losers.
“Yeah, tariffs are a good thing,” Zugai told me with a big smile. The charismatic union official, who met Trump when he visited Pittsburgh on election eve and who organized scores of fellow workers to attend the rally, said it is one of the reasons he voted for Trump.
“Tariffs level the playing field for us with China,” he said. “They’re the biggest steel producer. They just dump nonquality steel in our country, and we can’t compete with that.”
Zugai said he was in the click line the night before Trump was elected and got a couple of minutes to chat with him before he went onstage: “I spoke as fast as I could trying to get my point across to him, and he kind of chuckled and said, ‘We’ll talk after I get elected.’”
If Zugai had the chance to speak with Trump today, he’d urge him to look past the “optics” of a Japanese buyer and remember his promise to attract foreign investment.
“This is what the men and women on the floor want,” he said. “It is what we need to solidify our jobs. It saves the communities that surround our plants, plus all of the vendors and the contractors and everybody else that calls on U.S. Steel — it saves all of their jobs too.”
German added that Trump voters were watching him closely, hoping to see a payoff on their own investment in his political revival. “These guys worked hard and fought for Trump and won voters over for him,” he said. “The union guys that work here and want this deal to pass got him in Pennsylvania. It’s time to return that and help us out by keeping our jobs.”
Trump isn’t the only politician who courted the labor vote in the state. Biden’s union ties and Scranton upbringing helped put him over the line in 2020. But he proved to be a disappointment to the working class here — his focus on climate action was tone deaf to a segment of the population who were not finding these mythical green jobs in the places they call home. Harris repeated Biden’s policies and never managed to connect on a more personal level.
The steelworkers I talked to faulted overly burdensome environmental regulations for pushing the plant to its point of desperation. U.S. Steel announced in 2019 it would invest $1 billion to transform Mon Valley into the “most innovative steel mill in the United States of America.” Less than two years later, it canceled the project, casting the move as part of the company’s new sustainability commitments but also mentioning its long struggle to get the permitting approved. The county health department was a major source of conflict.
“Their regulations have cost us what would already be a brand-new hot mill rolling still right now,” German said. “Remember: All of us live in this area, so it’s not like we want to pollute. And so, the regulations make it good for our families. So we are all about having clean water, having clean air, and one of the things that proves it is our eagles.”
Before I left, German took me to the very edge of the cliff where Irvin Works overlooks the Monongahela River and Clairton Works. Just below us was an expansive eagle nest — and inside were Stella and Irvin and their three eggs.
“You know, the Game Commission says you need pristine air and pristine water for eagles to habitat; goes to show you we are getting this right,” he said.
When U.S. Steel was formed in 1901, it was the United States’ first billion dollar company and for a time the world’s largest company; it was a shining example of American technology and science as well as grit, the ethos of hard work and American exceptionalism. Working here then and now carried with it a sense of immense pride — you were part of something bigger than yourself; what you did here built the country and protected our troops in times of war. When the steel industry struggled, it felt like the nation was losing a piece of itself.
Bald eagles were once struggling to survive too. Their gradual disappearance was considered just one more depressing, inevitable sign of American decline. But the nation’s leaders got together, formed a plan to rescue them, and now they’re thriving, even on the edge of a steel mill.
I pointed out that their current choice of home seems like more than a coincidence. German smiled.
“It’s a sign,” he said.
