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U.S. Steel Shareholders Approve Sale to Japan's Nippon Steel

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Re: U.S. Steel Shareholders Approve Sale to Japan's Nippon Steel

#51

Post by avar »

MattGaiser wrote: post #40
renewiltord wrote: post #34

ITT Software Engineers who think that US Steel is the only US steel manufacturer because of the name. Nucor is bigger and better. You guys always want to prop up failing companies when we have better alternatives right here. Christ, we'd have an annual bailout for IBM's laptops to keep them from selling to Lenovo. I can just imagine: "All tech companies must buy Thinkpads. The government will give $20b to IBM to cont…

A lot of it is simply that people don’t update their knowledge from when they initially learned it. I still have relatives claiming that poor countries such as the Philippines, Thailand, and Egypt, and India are having 6+ kids per family.

Well, your relatives are probably right depending on how a "family" is defined.

Are we talking about children per household, do multi-generational families count? Then they're definitely more right than not.

Or are you all fumbling your way towards discussing the "birth rate", which is how it's usually discussed. That may or may not be the same as "kids per family".

Re: U.S. Steel Shareholders Approve Sale to Japan's Nippon Steel

#52

Post by bsder »

fragmede wrote: post #46
bsder wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can "solve" Japan owning US Steel by the army showing up tomorrow. You can't move a steel mill. You can't "solve" TikTok short of shutting them down.

Require Department of Homeland Security agents be given access to systems at TikTok to monitor and modify the algorithm to their liking instead of just shutting the whole thing down.

First, you would have a very determined adversary versus the very best of Homeland Security aka completely incompetent fools (in reality it would be outsourced to the very best lowest bidder).

Second, what are you gonna do when you find a violation, fine them? If you can even prove it, we know how well that works.

Third, no matter how you bend the algorithm, I can make it bend further to do what I want.

Finally, China will just keep swallowing whatever penalty in order to keep feeding propaganda.

All you are doing is postponing the inevitable shutdown. You might as well get it over with now.

Re: U.S. Steel Shareholders Approve Sale to Japan's Nippon Steel

#53

Post by gimmeThaBeet »

delfinom wrote: post #10
advisedwang wrote: post #2

Crazy that congress is fighting over ownership of TikTok, but letting a critical piece of US manufacturing be foreign owned with hardly a word.

They didn't care an actual us adversary bought a major pork producer in the US.... Japan is at least an allied country, and they wouldn't be buying a failing company to just throw it away. The company that mainly opposed it, Cleveland cliffs wants to buy the remains to have a complete monopoly on automotive metal supply.

Yeah, that part kind of grinds my gears a little bit. Aside from the politics getting involved, the biggest agitator is the rival bidder.

But part of their revised bid before Nippon included a breakup fee in case their bid got blocked on anti-trust grounds. Which, on the one hand, while I will say I probably disagree with a lot of anti-trust policy enforcement currently, the implicit notion that the rival American acquisition is better is imo kinda laughable.

The things CC is mainly interested in are like entirely horizontal, ore production/pelletizing, and automotive steel.

Cliffs has already bought AK and Arcelor's US mills in the past 5 years, the fact that they would be allowed to consolidate the midwest further is like, what do you actually believe in?

Re: U.S. Steel Shareholders Approve Sale to Japan's Nippon Steel

#54

Post by bigger_cheese »

jessriedel wrote: post #12

Strongly recommended blog post: ‘“No inventions; no innovations," a History of US Steel’ by Brian Potter https://www.construction-physics.com/p/no-inventions-no-inno...

Thanks for sharing, good article. I work in the Steel industry but was not all that familiar with the US history, my experience from the last 20 years is that the JKT area (Japan, Korea, Taiwan) have been the leaders with innovative technology and operating expertise, more recently Europeans have been doing interesting things with Hydrogen/green steelmaking for example.

The feeling I get at the moment is the industry is very much entering a transitional phase, I think we are seeing the sunset of the Blast Furnace era, it's kind of where the open hearth furnace was at the dawn of BOF, something is going to have to replace BFs but it's still not 100% clear what the replacement is going to look like (or even if there will be a one size fits all replacement for Blast Furnace, it's possible that several processes will emerge suited to different regions) companies are reluctant to blink first and back the wrong horse. The capital costs are very high so backing the wrong technology and needing to pivot later could be ruinous.

Over the next 5 years or so I expect we will start seeing more (and larger) pilot scale projects but I don't think BFs will truly start getting displaced until early to mid 2030's. Companies still clinging to BF into the 2040's will be in trouble in my opinion.

Re: U.S. Steel Shareholders Approve Sale to Japan's Nippon Steel

#55

Post by Razengan »

azinman2 wrote: post #5
advisedwang wrote: post #2

Crazy that congress is fighting over ownership of TikTok, but letting a critical piece of US manufacturing be foreign owned with hardly a word.

Having an adversary control the psychological inputs to half of your population (including a majority of the youth) is clearly a bad idea. I actually commend congress for taking this action, no matter the rhetoric. US steel is a separate issue that also probably shouldn’t be sold, but at least with Japan there’s some reciprocity in access to markets.

[flagged]

Re: U.S. Steel Shareholders Approve Sale to Japan's Nippon Steel

#56

Post by MattGaiser »

avar wrote: post #51
MattGaiser wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of it is simply that people don’t update their knowledge from when they initially learned it. I still have relatives claiming that poor countries such as the Philippines, Thailand, and Egypt, and India are having 6+ kids per family.

Well, your relatives are probably right depending on how a "family" is defined. Are we talking about children per household, do multi-generational families count? Then they're definitely more right than not. Or are you all fumbling your way towards discussing the "birth rate", which is how it's usually discussed. That may or may not be the same as "kids per family".

No, it is all about the birthrate. Those countries are poor as "they are having more children than they can feed, yet alone afford to educate."

Re: U.S. Steel Shareholders Approve Sale to Japan's Nippon Steel

#57

Post by crisply5706 »

Razengan wrote: post #55
azinman2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having an adversary control the psychological inputs to half of your population (including a majority of the youth) is clearly a bad idea. I actually commend congress for taking this action, no matter the rhetoric. US steel is a separate issue that also probably shouldn’t be sold, but at least with Japan there’s some reciprocity in access to markets.

[flagged]

No, it's not. Nobody said that. Stop screaming nonsense so that someone will argue with you.

Re: U.S. Steel Shareholders Approve Sale to Japan's Nippon Steel

#58

Post by D13Fd »

advisedwang wrote: post #2

Crazy that congress is fighting over ownership of TikTok, but letting a critical piece of US manufacturing be foreign owned with hardly a word.

> a critical piece of US manufacturing

You're wrong there. The U.S. Steel Corp. has a long history but hasn't been a the leader even in the U.S. for some time now. We are talking about a couple of very outdated steel plants coupled with some very outdated infrastructure, basically.

Re: U.S. Steel Shareholders Approve Sale to Japan's Nippon Steel

#59

Post by brg »

benced wrote: post #28
advisedwang wrote: post #2

Crazy that congress is fighting over ownership of TikTok, but letting a critical piece of US manufacturing be foreign owned with hardly a word.

Can you explain what nefarious things Japan - one of the US’s closest allies by the way - could do by owning 12% of the USA’s steel output in the form of physical factories that are on US soil?

Report to other governments the allocation and distribution of government steel purchasing, and thereby provide estimates for the production and maintenance of warships, subs, tanks, and other vehicles.

Re: U.S. Steel Shareholders Approve Sale to Japan's Nippon Steel

#60

Post by reducesuffering »

woooooo wrote: post #17
Loughla wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For now? I am pretty sure that at one point China was an ally and Japan an enemy. I think.

In the 80s and 90s there was a lot of hostility to Japan, because they looked like they might surpass us economically. They were even the villain of some Tom Clancy books. Now, the fear/hate is aimed at China, same reason.

Why don't you address the clear differences of an authoritarian one party dictatorship that already materially supports the invasion and destruction of Ukraine, and an impending invasion of another 80 year sovereign country?
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