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Almost one year after Nippon Steel closed its $14.9 billion takeover of US Steel, David Burritt, CEO of the Pittsburgh icon, said Thursday he’s “never seen a transformation go better.”
Speaking at Semafor World Economy in Washington, DC, Burritt said the new owners of US Steel, whose founders included Andrew Carnegie and JPMorgan, have embraced the team rather than clean house, brought new technology expertise to the new global steel giant, and are focused on meeting an end-of-2028 deadline to invest $10.8 billion in US infrastructure for manufacturing the metal.
The deal, which President Donald Trump signed off on in June 2025, made Nippon the world’s second-largest steel producer and gave it access to the US market without having to pay Trump’s tariffs.
Burritt said the upshot is that his company, as a Nippon subsidiary, is freed from worries about geopolitical uncertainty.
“Other companies are wondering, are they going to have the money, is it going to be a recession … there’s a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “We know we have a national security agreement that we have to get the money spent or committed by the end of 2028. This is more certainty than I had when we were a public company.”
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US approval of the deal was conditional on a so-called “golden share” agreement with Trump that gives the government veto power over certain actions, including changing the company name, moving the headquarters, or idling manufacturing facilities.
Burritt said the “golden share” agreement had been a “fantastic” thing for US Steel and hasn’t altered its strategy.
“You knew it was going to be a really hard meeting,” Burritt said of his White House visit to lobby Trump to support the deal. “But as it worked out, by the end of the meeting he was introducing me to Mark Zuckerberg as that good-looking CEO from US Steel.”