Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images
Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance departs a vote at the U.S. Capitol, July 10, 2023.
U.S. Steel, an iconic American company, has put itself on the auction block. The process began in August, when a rival steelmaker, Cleveland-Cliffs, made the company a $7.3 billion buyout offer, a 17 percent premium over the current value of U.S. Steel shares. Management then announced, in line with the ritual of “maximizing shareholder value” that it was open to other offers.
The United Steelworkers said it would welcome the sale to Cleveland-Cliffs, which is a union-friendly company. But management rejected that offer as too low, so the company may end up being sold to a foreign or non-union steelmaker.
USW President Tom Conway has said that the union would not support the sale to some other buyer. The company insists that the Steelworkers have no legal basis for blocking the sale.
In fact, the terms of the Steelworkers contract require any possible buyer of U.S. Steel to honor the union contract, including retirement and other benefits. Cleveland-Cliffs has said it would do so. It’s not clear that other prospective buyers would. So, in that respect, the union does have a kind of veto.
Meanwhile, Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance, a fake populist who loves fishing in troubled waters, published an op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post decrying the end of U.S. Steel. He wrote, “U.S. Steel is among the largest integrated steelmakers in the country. If it falls into the wrong hands, our industrial base and national security could be at risk.”
Vance went on to criticize court rulings that uphold the right and duty of corporate management to maximize shareholder value, as well as the decline of Rust Belt manufacturing companies. He declared, “The board of directors of U.S. Steel must reject any bid from a foreign acquirer. If the courts attempt to block them, then Congress should intervene. We must ensure that corporate transactions such as the sale of U.S. Steel advance our nation’s power and prosperity.”
Sounds convincing, but Vance has the wrong hero and the wrong villains. This is a classic case of blurring the corporate interest with the national interest.
The fact is that U.S. Steel has slowly been getting out of the integrated steel business for years, in favor of mini-mills. If our national economic security depends on U.S. Steel, God help us. Cleveland-Cliffs would be a far better owner of the remaining U.S. Steel facilities, as well as friendlier to its workers.
Vance had nary a word to say about the Steelworkers. Instead, he invoked a shallow form of nationalism, Trump-style.
It’s true that both political parties let American industry go down the drain for decades. And if pseudo populists like Vance, who went from being a hillbilly to a hedge fund guy, have any credibility, the Democrats of the neoliberal era have themselves to blame.
But now that Biden and most Democrats have belatedly embraced industrial policy—which increased the demand for steel and helped boost U.S. Steel’s value—Vance’s snake oil is cover for a traditional Republican ideology. When he is not invoking a cheap form of nationalism, Vance can be found with the Republican caucus, defending tax giveaways for the rich, the deregulation of Wall Street, and the rest of the usual package.
The trouble is that fake economic populism worked for Trump, and Vance is a more convincing, less psychotic version of Trump. And he’s only 39. If Democrats are to win the next round, they need to be more forceful defenders of working people than J.D. Vance.
