Biden’s Steel Move Is No Way to Treat an Ally: Gearoid Reidy (1)

The most telling moment in the Biden Administration’s decision to block Nippon Steel Corp.’s attempted takeover of United States Steel Corp. was unintentional.

In the executive order preventing the deal on spurious national security grounds, staffers for President Joe Biden appeared to accidentally copy-and-paste the title of a previous presidential order — one ordering a Chinese crypto mining company to vacate property near an Air Force base. That left the Nippon Steel directive entitled: “Regarding the acquisition of certain real property of Cheyenne leads by MineOne Cloud Computing Investment.”

It sums up what many in Japan will be thinking of the ...