Published: December 7, 2025 – Informational, not investment advice.
Key Takeaways
- U.S. Steel (former NYSE: X) is no longer a standalone listed company – it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan’s Nippon Steel on June 18, 2025, in a $14.9 billion all‑cash deal at $55 per share. [1]
- The company is restarting a blast furnace at Granite City Works in Illinois, reversing earlier plans to wind down steelmaking there and hiring around 400 workers to meet expected 2026 demand. [2]
- Fitch has affirmed U.S. Steel’s investment‑grade credit rating at ‘BBB‑’ with a Stable outlook, highlighting the strategic benefits and capital support from Nippon Steel as the new parent. [3]
- Nippon Steel views U.S. Steel’s weak 2025 performance as temporary, and still targets a meaningful profit contribution by 2028, supported by an $11 billion U.S. investment plan. [4]
- For “X stock” watchers, the story has shifted from an equity trading play to a strategic, political and credit‑quality story inside Nippon Steel’s global empire.
Where “X stock” stands after the Nippon Steel takeover
For anyone typing “X stock” into a search bar today, it’s worth starting with the blunt reality:
- U.S. Steel is now a subsidiary, not an independent public company.
- The NYSE listing under ticker X was terminated on June 18, 2025, the same day Nippon Steel completed its acquisition. [5]
- Former shareholders were bought out at $55 per share in cash, roughly where the stock traded in mid‑June as markets priced in deal completion and the unusual political conditions attached to it. [6]
The path to that outcome was messy. The deal was originally announced in December 2023, then blocked on national‑security grounds in early 2025. The turnaround came after a revised structure – often described as a “planned partnership” – in which:
- U.S. Steel keeps its headquarters in Pittsburgh.
- Its board is majority U.S. citizens.
- The U.S. government holds a “golden share” that lets the president appoint a director and veto key decisions, such as moving the HQ, closing plants, or scaling back promised U.S. investment. [7]
In practical terms, that means U.S. Steel is now a politically entangled, strategically important U.S. asset inside a Japanese parent – not a typical industrial subsidiary.
Latest headline: Granite City blast furnace comes back to life
The biggest December 2025 news for the former X stock is centered on one plant: Granite City Works in Illinois.
Over the past week, multiple outlets have confirmed that U.S. Steel will restart one of two blast furnaces at Granite City, which has been idled since 2023. [8]
Key details from those reports:
- The restart is driven by rising customer demand, with U.S. Steel pointing to the need to meet anticipated 2026 orders. [9]
- The company plans to hire roughly 400 workers, taking total employment at the site to around 1,200. [10]
- The furnace is expected to be fully back in operation in the first half of 2026, with much of 2025’s endgame focused on restart preparations and staffing. [11]
This is not just a local labor story; it’s being interpreted as:
- A vote of confidence in U.S. steel demand going into 2026, as order books and prices recover from earlier softness. [12]
- One of the first big operational moves under Nippon Steel’s ownership, showing how the Japanese parent intends to deploy capital and capacity on U.S. soil. [13]
For anyone who used to trade X, Granite City is now a real‑economy proxy for what the “post‑listing” U.S. Steel story looks like: decisions about capacity, jobs and political promises, rather than daily share price swings.
From closure fears to restart: how politics shaped Granite City
If the Granite City news feels abrupt, that’s because the trajectory in 2025 has been whiplash‑inducing.
Earlier this year:
- U.S. Steel said it would stop processing steel slabs at Granite City and “optimize” operations by routing production to other mills, while keeping workers employed as caretakers until at least 2027. [14]
- Local communities and unions read that as the beginning of the end for primary steelmaking at the site.
Then the golden share showed its teeth. According to reporting in late September, the White House publicly stated it had intervened – under the national‑security agreement tied to Nippon’s takeover – to block U.S. Steel’s plan to idle the plant fully, threatening to invoke presidential veto power if necessary. [15]
Fast‑forward to December:
- The plant isn’t just being kept in a “warm idle” state; a blast furnace is being brought back online.
- The restart decision is being cast as both a market‑driven move and a political win for those who argued the golden share should protect U.S. jobs as well as military supply chains. [16]
For investors, the lesson is that operational decisions at U.S. Steel are no longer purely commercial. Capacity, closures and expansions are now negotiated in a triangle between:
- Nippon Steel management,
- U.S. Steel’s local leadership and unions, and
- The U.S. federal government, which literally has a special voting share.
That’s not inherently good or bad for long‑term value creation, but it does mean political risk and policy signaling matter almost as much as steel prices.
Credit story: Fitch keeps U.S. Steel at investment grade
On December 5, 2025, Fitch Ratings reaffirmed U.S. Steel’s Issuer Default Rating at ‘BBB‑’ with a Stable outlook, as well as the same rating on key unsecured bonds and its asset‑based lending facility. [17]
Why that matters:
- BBB‑ is the lowest rung of “investment grade.” Staying there keeps borrowing costs lower than they would be in speculative territory. [18]
- Fitch explicitly evaluates U.S. Steel under its “stronger parent” framework, giving the company a two‑notch uplift from its standalone profile because of support from Nippon Steel, whose own credit quality is higher. [19]
The rating note highlights several important points for anyone tracking the post‑X story:
- Parent support and linkage
Fitch sees modest legal ties (no blanket guarantees) but medium strategic and operational linkages, driven by Nippon’s need for U.S. production and customer coverage. That’s enough to justify rating U.S. Steel off the back of its parent rather than purely on legacy metrics. [20] - Big capital‑spending commitments
Under the national‑security agreement, U.S. Steel is required to invest around $11 billion in U.S. facilities by 2028, part of a wider $14 billion U.S. investment pledge from Nippon Steel. [21]
Fitch notes this will not be fully funded by U.S. Steel’s own cash flows, so continuing financial support from Nippon is assumed. - Deleveraging and liquidity
A chunk of acquisition‑related financing has already been injected as equity or hybrid capital into U.S. Steel – including funds used to redeem convertible notes. Fitch’s base case expects leverage to stay compatible with BBB‑ if Nippon doesn’t aggressively load additional debt onto the U.S. entity. [22]
The upshot: credit markets are currently treating U.S. Steel as a strategically important, supported subsidiary inside a stronger group, not as a distressed standalone American cyclical.
Earnings and operations: why 2025 looks weak on paper
On the surface, 2025 has not been a banner year for U.S. Steel’s standalone financials:
- Earlier in the year, the company reported a Q1 2025 net loss of about $116 million, versus a profit in the prior year, reflecting lower prices, logistical issues and other headwinds. [23]
- The company has also dealt with operational disruptions, including an explosion at the Clairton Coke Works plant near Pittsburgh in August, which led to fatalities and temporary capacity issues. [24]
In a December 1 interview, Nippon Steel’s vice chairman described U.S. Steel’s recent weak performance as temporary, blaming:
- falling U.S. steel prices amid tariff noise and rate uncertainty,
- the Clairton incident, and
- lingering variable‑cost disadvantages from historic under‑investment. [25]
Despite that, Nippon Steel has not reduced its medium‑term ambitions:
- It still expects U.S. Steel to contribute around ¥250 billion (roughly $1.6 billion) in profit by 2028, once modernization, new capacity (including the Big River 2 mill) and integration synergies are in place. [26]
So the 2025 P&L looks ugly in places, but the parent is signaling that this is the “investment and clean‑up” phase, not a reason to pull back.
Investment and capacity plans through 2028
Beyond Granite City, Nippon and U.S. Steel have sketched out a wide‑ranging U.S. capital program:
- Around $11 billion of U.S. growth capex by the end of 2028, focused on:
- upgrading existing facilities,
- research and product development, and
- higher‑value steel products. [27]
- Commitments to protect or create more than 100,000 U.S. jobs tied to the combined company’s footprint – a number that includes both direct and indirect employment. [28]
- Evaluation of sites in two or three U.S. states for a new mill capable of around 3 million tons of annual capacity, according to recent comments from Nippon Steel executives. [29]
If you step back, this essentially turns U.S. Steel into Nippon Steel’s main U.S. growth platform, with Washington locked in as both watchdog and political partner via the golden share.
So what does any of this mean if you cared about X stock?
Here’s the somewhat unsatisfying but honest answer:
- There is no longer an “X stock” to trade on the NYSE. Former shareholders have already been cashed out. [30]
- The equity market exposure is now:
- Nippon Steel shares in Tokyo (5401.T) for broad exposure to the combined group, and
- various bonds and credit instruments tied to U.S. Steel for fixed‑income investors, now sitting at BBB‑. [31]
However, the underlying drivers that used to move X are still very much alive:
- U.S. spot steel prices and tariffs. [32]
- Auto and construction demand, which are key customer segments highlighted in recent coverage of the Granite City restart. [33]
- Labor relations with the United Steelworkers, now layered on top of geopolitical scrutiny of a Japanese owner. [34]
If you used to follow X as a pure cyclical trading vehicle, the story is now more complicated: it’s a hybrid of industrial recovery, political engineering, and parent‑company strategy.
Risks and watchpoints heading into 2026
For anyone tracking the post‑listing U.S. Steel story, a few themes are worth watching:
- Execution risk on mega‑capex
Delivering $11–14 billion of U.S. investment on time and on budget, without blowing up leverage, is non‑trivial. Fitch’s rating rests on the assumption that Nippon Steel helps fund these projects without over‑gearing U.S. Steel. [35] - Steel price volatility and tariffs
Section 232 policy tweaks, derivative tariffs and country‑specific measures remain moving targets. These policies impact price spreads and demand patterns – something already visible in 2025’s shipment and pricing data. [36] - Political intervention via the golden share
The same mechanism that just helped keep Granite City open could also constrain cost‑cutting, plant rationalization or cross‑border restructuring in the future. That’s a feature from a national‑security perspective, and a potential bug from a pure‑finance one. [37] - Operational safety and ESG pressures
Incidents like the Clairton explosion attract regulator, community and investor scrutiny, especially when a company is pitching itself as a long‑term strategic partner to a government. [38]
Bottom line
As of December 7, 2025, the former U.S. Steel (X) story looks nothing like the high‑beta cyclical stock it once was.
- Operationally, the company is ramping capacity back up at Granite City and preparing for a multi‑year investment binge under Nippon Steel’s ownership.
- Financially, it sits at the edge of investment grade, buoyed by parent support and constrained by big capex promises.
- Politically, it’s become a live experiment in how far a golden share can reshape corporate decision‑making in a strategic industry.
References
1. en.wikipedia.org, 2. www.reuters.com, 3. www.tradingview.com, 4. www.reuters.com, 5. en.wikipedia.org, 6. www.reuters.com, 7. www.whitehouse.gov, 8. www.reuters.com, 9. www.reuters.com, 10. www.reuters.com, 11. www.wsj.com, 12. www.wsj.com, 13. www.reuters.com, 14. www.firstalert4.com, 15. www.inddist.com, 16. www.wsj.com, 17. www.tradingview.com, 18. en.wikipedia.org, 19. www.tradingview.com, 20. www.tradingview.com, 21. www.manufacturingdive.com, 22. www.tradingview.com, 23. www.stocktitan.net, 24. www.wesa.fm, 25. www.reuters.com, 26. www.reuters.com, 27. www.manufacturingdive.com, 28. www.manufacturingdive.com, 29. www.japantimes.co.jp, 30. en.wikipedia.org, 31. www.tradingview.com, 32. www.fastmarkets.com, 33. apnews.com, 34. en.wikipedia.org, 35. www.tradingview.com, 36. www.jdsupra.com, 37. www.whitehouse.gov, 38. www.wesa.fm
