“The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) was unable to reach a consensus on Japan’s Nippon Steel’s $15 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel. The very committee that is responsible for safeguarding the U.S. from compromising foreign investments doesn’t recommend blocking the merger”
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“CFIUS’s inability to recommend blocking the merger on national security grounds is not surprising: Japan is not an enemy of the U.S., but a close ally. The U.S. has been formally allied with Japan since the signing of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in 1951. In April, Biden and former Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida issued a joint statement celebrating “a new era” of bilateral security cooperation and announcing “several new strategic initiatives to strengthen our defense and security cooperation [and] bolster economic security.”
A section of the joint statement details the two countries’ commitment to economic cooperation under the U.S.-Japan Competitiveness and Resilience (CoRe) Partnership, which the Biden administration announced in April 2021 to advance cooperation “on sensitive supply chains…and on the promotion and protection of critical technologies.” The statement also celebrates mutual investment, pointing to Microsoft’s $2.9 billion investment in AI and cloud infrastructure in Japan and Toyota’s $8 billion battery production investment in North Carolina—a mere 1 percent of Japan’s $800 billion in foreign direct investment in the U.S.
If mutual investment in critical industries like semiconductors and batteries doesn’t compromise national security, the burden of proof is on those opposing Japanese investment in American steel production to explain why it does. CFIUS could not meet this burden and refrained from issuing a recommendation accordingly.”
https://reason.com/2024/12/26/nippon-steel-u-s-steel-merger-poses-no-national-security-threat