Nippon Steel and US Steel sue Biden administration over blocked deal

Good morning. In today’s newsletter:

• Nippon Steel and US Steel sue Biden administration

• Canada’s Trudeau announces resignation

• Ruchir Sharma’s top 10 trends to watch in 2025

Nippon Steel and US Steel have sued the Biden administration after their proposed $15bn combination was blocked by the US president just days earlier.

In a statement yesterday, the steelmakers said that the suit asked for Biden’s decision to be set aside because of “unlawful political interference” in the process.

The companies also filed a separate suit in the US against rival steel producer Cleveland-Cliffs, its chief executive Lourenco Goncalves and United Steelworkers president David McCall, alleging “illegal and co-ordinated actions aimed at preventing the transaction”.

The takeover saga has put Washington’s relationship with Tokyo under strain and raised questions about the US’s openness to foreign investment and its national security screening process for international acquisitions.

Biden blocked the deal on Friday, citing “credible evidence” that, through the acquisition, Nippon might take steps that would hurt US security. However, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, which vets foreign acquisitions, had failed to reach consensus on whether the deal posed a national security threat.

Here’s what else to know about the suits — and how incoming president Donald Trump reacted.

And here’s what else we’re keeping tabs on today:

• Economic data: China announces its forex reserves for December. Taiwan and the Philippines report December inflation data.

• Meetings: Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong visits Malaysia to meet his counterpart Anwar Ibrahim.

Five more top stories

1. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced he is resigning after almost a decade in power. The decision follows weeks of speculation over his political future amid plunging poll ratings and opposition within his own Liberal party. Trudeau added that he was suspending parliament until March 24 to give the Liberals time to choose a new leader, in a move that sparked a backlash from his critics.

2. Tencent’s US-listed shares fell as much as 9.8 per cent after the Pentagon designated the tech giant as a Chinese military company operating in the US. The Pentagon also added China’s CATL, the world’s biggest battery maker, to the blacklist. Here’s how the designation could affect the companies’ business operations.

3. China is signing growing numbers of visiting Taiwanese people up for local resident or even identity cards, in a drive to incorporate them into its society that is setting off alarm bells in Taipei. Taiwanese officials fear the push could open the door for China to intervene in its domestic affairs as Beijing expands a multi-faceted pressure campaign against the country.

4. South Korea’s anti-graft agency has sought to extend an arrest warrant for President Yoon Suk Yeol, as pressure mounted on law enforcers to resolve the country’s escalating political crisis. The move came after the agency failed on Friday to detain Yoon after an hours-long stand-off, and as US secretary of state Antony Blinken visited Seoul on Monday.

5. KKR has called on the board of Fuji Soft to take legal action against Bain Capital’s rival bid for the $4bn Japanese software company. The escalating fight between the private equity firms is testing new ground in a market unused to public takeover battles.

The Big Read

Projections about the coming year assume the Trump administration will dictate mar­ket shifts, but Ruchir Sharma argues that the world is not unipolar and does not revolve around one personality — even one as big as Trump’s. Contrarian investing will make a return in 2025 and don’t discount China. Here are Ruchir’s top 10 trends to watch in 2025.

We’re also reading . . . 

• Maga vs the billionaires: Trump’s fragile political coalition is already splintering over immigration, writes Rana Foroohar.

• The Gen Z problem for audit firms: The profession is finding it harder to attract and retain staff — a key factor in the quality of inspections.

• Austria: A weekend resignation puts the country’s far right on track for a historic first.

Chart of the day

Chinese venture capitalists are hounding failed founders, pursuing personal assets and adding the individuals to a national debtor blacklist when they fail to pay up, in moves that are throwing the country’s start-up funding ecosystem into crisis.

Take a break from the news

What happened to wine in 2024? In a word, weather, lots of it and rarely following established patterns. Read Jancis Robinson on the year in wine.