The US Treasury has told Nippon Steel that the panel vetting its proposed acquisition of US Steel has not reached consensus on how to mitigate security risks, raising the odds that President Joe Biden will block the $15bn deal.
showed no sign of reversing its opposition. If Cfius reached unanimous agreement, Biden would have to find another justification to derail the transaction if he wanted to block it. If the panel remains split, however, Biden would be required to make the decision. One person very close to the process said Biden was determined to block the deal. He said some of the government agencies pushing to approve the deal were also increasingly resigned that they would lose the Cfius battle.
did not respond to a request for comment. It remains unclear whether Raimondo supports the mitigation agreement. Several people said commerce appeared to be sitting on the fence. The commerce department declined to comment. “The Nippon case reveals a flaw in the Cfius process, where a member like
, that does not have national security pedigrees nor represents any specific risk arising from this transaction, is able to make a huge geostrategic mis-step,” said one former Biden administration Cfius official.