President Donald Trump will hold his first rally in Pa. since his reelection — this time with steelworkers
At his first rally in the state since the 2024 campaign, the president will address steelworkers at a plant near Pittsburgh.
President Donald Trump will return to Pennsylvania on Friday for his first rally in the state since his reelection, speaking in front of a crowd of steelworkers outside Pittsburgh.
Trump is expected to host the rally with steelworkers to mark a deal he said he helped strike between Japan-based Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel to bring in Nippon while keeping the steel manufacturer under U.S. control.
The president will take a victory lap on the deal applauded by Pennsylvania lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, rallying in the critical state he won in November, but where his approval ratings have lagged in recent months.
“For many years, the name, ‘United States Steel’ was synonymous with Greatness, and now, it will be again,” Trump said in a Truth Social post celebrating the deal.
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Trump will appear at Irvin Works Plant in West Mifflin, a steel processing facility outside Pittsburgh operated by U.S. Steel, according to a source familiar with the plans but not authorized to speak about them publicly.
While the plant employs members of the United Steelworkers, the union, which vehemently opposed a sale, was still skeptical of the deal this week, saying it raised more questions than answers.
In March, Trump made his first trip to Pennsylvania since being elected to a second term, attending the NCAA wrestling championships in South Philadelphia at the invitation of freshman Republican Sen. Dave McCormick.
Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.), who lives in Braddock, near where the event will take place, applauded the deal on social media. “The original deal was a death sentence for the Mon Valley steel,” he said. “Nippon coughed up an extra $14B. This is why we fight for the union way of life.”
Neither McCormick’s nor Fetterman’s spokespeople responded to inquiries about whether the lawmakers would attend Friday’s event.
The visit to West Mifflin will mark Trump’s first trip to the western part of the state since the 2024 presidential campaign. It will likely include a heavy security detail and will take place indoors, following the scrutiny over Secret Service protections that mounted after the assassination attempt against Trump during an outdoor rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds last July.
Trump announced on Truth Social his plans to visit Western Pennsylvania, but access to the event has not been advertised and the rally does not appear to be open to the public.
During the last election, Trump — who made frequent campaign stops in Pennsylvania — improved on his 2020 margins across the commonwealth, winning it along with the other so-called blue wall states last year. However, since his inauguration and signing a torrent of executive orders aimed at a sweeping governmental transformation, his approval ratings have plummeted in those and other swing states, including Pennsylvania.
What’s in the steel deal?
In December 2023, U.S. Steel’s board and shareholders approved Nippon Steel’s bid to buy the company, setting off a flurry of protestations from lawmakers and the Steelworkers union. The deal was blocked by former President Joe Biden on his way out of office on national security grounds.
Trump revisited the issue and called for another national security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
The merger agreement reportedly struck last week allows Nippon Steel to invest in U.S. Steel but guarantees an American CEO, a majority of board members from the United States, and U.S. government approval over certain corporate functions, McCormick said in an interview with CNBC.
It also includes some of the provisions in the original deal, according to the Associated Press.
Nippon, which has not publicly commented on the details of the deal touted by Trump and Pennsylvania lawmakers, had always planned to keep U.S. Steel’s headquarters in Pittsburgh and pledged to put the company under a board made up of a majority of American citizens, with a management team made up of American citizens.
The Japanese company also pledged not to lay off workers or close plants as a result of the sale.
But Nippon considerably upped its initial $15 billion bid to buy the iconic steelmaker, lawmakers said.
Nippon sweetened its bid with an additional $14 billion investment, according to Trump, McCormick, and State Sen. Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland), who valued the deal in total at $28 billion.
While Trump will rally with steelworkers on Friday, their union’s leader, who had vehemently opposed the sale, said he still had questions about the deal and concerns about a foreign country acquiring such a large slice of the steel trade.
The United Steelworkers were less than celebratory this week and in a statement noted that Nippon had previously maintained it would invest in U.S. Steel only if it owned the company outright.
“We’ve seen nothing in the reporting over the past few days suggesting that Nippon has walked away from this position,” the statement, signed by United Steelworkers International president David McCall and District 7 director Mike Millsap, said. “We also cannot confirm how much of the publicly claimed $14 billion in proposed investment would be directed to our union-represented plants, or how much of that sum would go toward genuinely new capital improvements as opposed to routine repair and maintenance.”
“Our core concerns about Nippon Steel — a foreign-owned corporation with a documented history of violating U.S. trade laws — remain as strong and valid today as ever,” the statement read.
Staff writer Gillian McGoldrick contributed to this article, which contains information from the Associated Press.