The fight over US Steel is intensifying, and a top competitor now wants in

A US Steel plant in Braddock, Pennsylvania.

As the fight over US Steel ramped up this week, its top US steelmaking competitor is now condemning the company and offering to save the day.

Cleveland-Cliffs, a steel manufacturer based in Cleveland, said in a press release on Thursday that it would support President Joe Biden’s reported decision to block the $14.9 billion sale of Pittsburgh-based US Steel to Japanese steelmaker Nippon.

Biden has not announced that he will formally block the deal — which US Steel and Nippon agreed to in December — but sources told both The Washington Post and The Financial Times earlier this week that the president plans to do so soon.

Just hours before Biden’s planned rejection was reported, US Steel suggested that it would close down its mills and move out of Pennsylvania — a swing state critical to the 2024 election — if the deal collapses.

Then, Cleveland-Cliffs entered the chat.

In its press release on Thursday, the Ohio-based company offered to buy up US Steel’s unionized mills if it follows through on its threat to close them down.

“Cleveland-Cliffs stands ready to immediately acquire and invest in any and all union-represented assets that US Steel shuts down, protecting union jobs and investing in the future livelihoods and communities in which the facilities operate,” Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves said in the release, adding that the company has the support of the United Steelworkers union and ample financing available.

And the company didn’t waste the opportunity to throw shade at its rival.

“The last-minute threats by US Steel to shut down integrated steelmaking production, fire union workers, and move their headquarters from Pittsburgh if their deal does not close is just a pathetic blackmail attempt on the United States government and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Goncalves said. “By taking immediate action, our government is showing that this type of shameless behavior will never be tolerated.”

Goncalves stressed his belief that the steel mills should remain American-owned and operated — a stance that Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have echoed on the campaign trail.

US Steel has maintained that the sale to Nippon would not affect national security.

The company’s CEO, David Burritt, has also defended the possibility of shuttering its mills, telling The Wall Street Journal that the company just doesn’t “have the money” to keep them open.