Mental Incapacity, My Ass

Against the recommendations, Joe Biden rejected the merger of Nippon and US Steel.

I agree with the decision, but even if I didn't, this is completely on brand for Biden to reject the importunities of the so-called experts in the field.

It should be noted that these experts, who have given us NAFTA, CAFTA, WIPO, the decline of the American working and middle class, investor–state dispute settlement boards, and almost the Trans Pacific Partnership.

These deals have rarely served the general populace, and have more often served the interests of big donors.

The experts who advocate for these deals frequently set up lucrative consultancies to profit from their administration, so they make money, and businesses whose profits come from rent seeking through these deals, like Pharm and Media, make money, but the rest of us lose.

President Joe Biden’s blocking of a Japanese company’s bid to purchase U.S. Steel overrode the advice of numerous top aides, ending a long-running debate that had divided the president’s inner circle, according to seven officials familiar with the matter.

The decision to nix Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion takeover bid helps cement Biden’s image as a staunch defender of U.S. unions but leaves the fate of thousands of workers unclear and tees up a potentially protracted legal battle over whether politics influenced a security review that is supposed to be left to experts.

Biden had long said he opposed the purchase of U.S. Steel, arguing the iconic company needed to stay in domestic hands, a position that many observers saw as political pragmatism to shore up the union vote in an election year. But with the election over and President-elect Donald Trump set to take office, some aides thought there might be a slim chance to persuade Biden to relent in his last days in office, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

At a White House meeting convened by Biden’s chief of staff Jeff Zients on Thursday evening, some of these aides, such as national security adviser Jake Sullivan, noted that one option was a conditional block of the acquisition. That would have allowed Nippon Steel to advance more proposals to minimize potential national security risks, effectively pushing the matter to the next administration, according to three officials.

Over the last several months, more than a half-dozen senior administration officials — including Sullivan deputy Jonathan Finer, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, his deputy Kurt Campbell, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers Jared Bernstein and top Commerce officials — argued against or expressed reservations about the position Biden ultimately took, said officials familiar with the deliberations.

………

But for some members of the president’s domestic economic team and for his political advisers in particular, blocking the deal gave the White House a rare opportunity to protect U.S. jobs, deliver a clear victory to the nation’s labor unions and burnish Biden’s legacy. Skeptics of the deal, which was strongly opposed by United Steelworkers President David McCall, thought Nippon had an uneven track record of protecting workers. They also felt that Nippon Steel had a year to advance a meaningful mitigation plan but repeatedly failed to do so, according to one U.S. official familiar with their views. 

Also, any mitigation plan would have been ignored.

When push came to shove, in a world where there is already a glut of steel, Nippon Steel would have cut US jobs, and not Japanese ones.

I was around in 1993 when NAFTA was being debated, and Clinton insisted that there would be side deals to address the concerns of critics.  

Surprise, these side deals were never made, because harming ordinary workers was a feature, not a bug.

As to whether or not this is an actual security risk, who cares.

Good on Joe.