Thompson Coburn partner Robert Shapiro was quoted in a recent Law360 article on the unlikelihood of success in U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel’s lawsuit against President Biden’s block on their merger.
In a recent mitigation effort, Nippon sent the White House a proposal giving the U.S. government veto power over any potential production deadlines. Robert, co-chair of the firm’s Regulatory Practice group, said he had expected a last-ditch deal was going to be made to get the transaction done. But, ultimately, he said the “politics of this” won out, and that Biden acted largely on his pro-labor allegiance and his desire to block the deal instead of allowing incoming President Trump to do so.
“I find it unlikely that a court is going to find that the president acted outside of his authority,” he said. “The national security judgment of the president is pretty much paramount, and Congress has delegated much of that power to the president … [The companies] can throw the statements out there that the president made, but I don’t think that’s going to swing things. So I think this is a Hail Mary.”
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