Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

In 1901 J.P. Morgan bought out Andrew Carnegie’s steel empire and combined it with Federal Steel, National Steel and others into the United States Steel Corporation. The merger cost about $492 million, yet the new company was capitalized at $1.4 billion when the entire federal budget was under $1 billion, and in 1902 it made 67 percent of American steel. It owned iron ore and coal mines, railroads and the largest commercial fleet on the Great Lakes, but fear of antitrust action made it cautious, letting rivals like Bethlehem Steel out-innovate it. After absorbing the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company of Birmingham in 1907, it relied, according to author Douglas Blackmon, on convict leasing deals with more than 20 Alabama counties, paying about $9 a month per prisoner to work its coal mines into the late 1920s.

In 1952 Harry Truman seized the steel mills during the Korean War, and the Supreme Court ruled he lacked the authority. In 1962 John F. Kennedy forced U.S. Steel to reverse a price hike. The company recognized the union in 1937 under Myron Taylor, then in 1986 endured a six-month work stoppage of 22,000 workers and closed four plants, cutting 3,500 union jobs. With tax relief meant for modernizing mills, it bought Marathon Oil in 1982 and became USX in 1986. Its market share fell to 8 percent by 2001 and it left the S&P 500 in 2014. After buying non-union Big River Steel in Arkansas, it rejected a $7.3 billion Cleveland-Cliffs bid and accepted Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion offer in December 2023. President Biden blocked the sale through CFIUS in early 2025, and in May 2025 President Trump allowed it with a U.S. government golden share.

• The 1948 Donora smog trapped emissions from U.S. Steel’s zinc works over the Pennsylvania town, killing 20 people in three days and 50 more afterward.
• U.S. Steel created the Steelmark logo later adopted by the Pittsburgh Steelers, built the 1964 World’s Fair Unisphere and supplied modular steel rooms for Disney’s Contemporary Resort.
• Big River uses electric arc furnaces that melt scrap with electricity and need a fraction of the workers of legacy blast furnaces.
• Activist investor Ancora Holdings launched a proxy fight to oust CEO David Burritt, cancel the Nippon deal and sell Big River.
• The golden share lets Washington appoint a director and veto moving headquarters from Pittsburgh, closing certain plants or changing the name, powers that later pass to the Treasury and Commerce departments.