No, because ideas can be beartraps. What would happen if some of these things are done is the outcome is being stuck in a beartrap looking foolish and hypocritical while being prodded with a very, very long stick. This is a bad thing, my friend. Also they are very good at this and many of our leaders very, very bad at recognizing and avoiding this.
About the US Steel, you are right, that doesn't seem to make sense. On the political end, it seems to almost entirely reflect a need to take a position that does not send voters in a crucial state to the other party. I feel this is because these voters have been misled, and from what little I know, to support a position that as it stands seems to mostly benefit a domestic purchaser and probably whoever may or may not be shorting the US Steel stock right now. Here is an old article, and one that has far more detail than contemporary robot rider articles. Seriously, internet articles are completely fucked up right now in the major outlets.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/12/business/us-steel-nippon-steel-deal/index.htmlMy guess why is because the Navy is probably going to get some shipyards up and running to build some new ships. Conservatives are starting to howl about this and use it as a club against the centrists, so it's a likely outcome. What we are probably seeing probably has an end goal of something like this: 1:stock price go down, short optional. 2: Major competitor buys commodity market by consolidating 3: Navy buys steel for ships at new, uncompetitive steel prices. Jingoists likely howl that it must be domestic steel, possibly pass requirement in law to force this.
I assume it will be laid out that if this doesn't occur that US Steel Must Fail and it's all those Dang Centrists's fault. There is possibly another option but it seems unlikely to be considered seriously in the United States' political climate at this time.
Another thing this is bad for is car manufacturers. Automobile steel is higher quality than random metal junk quality. Junk quality can be made cheaper in electric forges, smelters or whatnot terminology. US Steel largely uses the older and less efficient blast furnaces. However they do own some sort of electric forge and Nippon's interest in the company is purportedly mostly in the electric furnace side of things. I'm not sure if the electric forges are projected to take over for automotive steel production, but if so that may also be a motive for blocking the deal: to keep from having to upgrade existing capital to match a more comptetive process that Nippon is expressing interest in acquiring and perhaps expanding upon.
In addition this is a pattern of behavior that is being spoken about among foreign investors in a way that even I, a rube who reads news articles, am becoming aware of. This is because of things like the unlawful internet regulations being rammed through against expert and popular opinion when media and information operations fail to achieve popular support, increasing jingoism and willingness to engage in self-harming trade policy that seems to be headed in a more oligarchic path.