U.S. Steel and Nippon Sue Biden Over Decision to Block Deal

The companies argue in a lawsuit that the process of reviewing the transaction was corrupted by politics.

U.S. Steel and Japan’s Nippon Steel sued the United States government on Monday in a last-ditch attempt to revive their attempted merger after President Biden blocked it last week on the basis that the transaction posed a threat to national security.

The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Washington, accused Mr. Biden and other senior administration officials of corrupting the review process for political gain and of harming steel workers and the American steel industry by blocking the deal under false national security pretenses.

Mr. Biden moved to block the merger after a government panel charged with reviewing foreign investments failed to reach a decision about whether the deal should proceed. In a statement on Friday, Mr. Biden said that he was acting to ensure that the U.S. maintains a strong domestically owned and operated steel industry. The president had previously vowed to ensure that U.S. Steel remained American-owned.

The companies are asking for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to conduct a new review of the deal.

The companies also filed a separate lawsuit against Cleveland-Cliffs, an American steel company that previously tried to buy U.S. Steel but was rebuffed, along with Lourenco Goncalves, chief executive of Cleveland-Cliffs, and David McCall, international president of the powerful union United Steelworkers. The lawsuit alleged that Cleveland-Cliffs and the head of the union illegally colluded to undermine the proposed deal between U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel.

The legal actions represented a long-shot maneuver by the companies to preserve a deal that was ensnared in election year politics. Presidents have broad authority to determine what constitutes a national security threat, and no transaction blocked under those powers has ever been overturned by the courts.