“There’s not a company in the U.S. that can domestically produce the high-end, electrical steel sheets for automobiles which we produce at our steel mills in Japan.”
I am hoping that the opposition to this is ends up being political theater, because this protectionism is going to get in the way of higher-quality domestic steel production.
It’s also an awful geopolitical own goal. From abroad, blocking this will look like ‘a rule for thee and not for me’ - American companies acquire foreign companies all the time with little fanfare, that’s just capitalism, but this sort of nakedly xenophobic reaction to a company from one of the US’s closest allies coming in will really undermine America (and by extension the US-led liberal economic order) in the wider world.
Exactly.
Unfortunately though, it fits squarely into the “America First” rhetoric that is resonating with a lot of America.
