PITTSBURGH — Vice President Kamala Harris plans to use Monday’s joint campaign appearance in the industrial city of Pittsburgh with President Joe Biden to say that U.S. Steel should remain domestically owned — coinciding with the White House’s earlier opposition to the company’s planned sale to Nippon Steel of Japan.
Harris “is expected to say that U.S. Steel should remain domestically owned and operated and stress her commitment to always have the backs of American steel workers,” her campaign said.
That’s similar to Biden, who has said he opposes U.S. Steel’s would-be sale to Nippon in order to better “maintain strong American steel companies powered by American steel workers.” But it still constitutes a major policy position for the vice president, who has offered relatively few of them since Biden abandoned his reelection bid and endorsed Harris in July.
Biden was met with chants of “Thank You, Joe” from hundreds of union members as he and Harris came onstage at an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers hall in Pittsburgh.
Biden, who flipped the script by introducing Harris, called her the only “rational” choice for president in November. He said choosing her to be vice president was the “single best” decision of his presidency and told the union members that electing her will be “the best decision you will ever make.”
Harris has been careful to balance presenting herself as “a new way forward” while remaining intensely loyal to Biden and the policies he has pushed. Her delivery is very different — and in some cases she’s pushed to move faster than Biden’s administration — but the overall goal of expanding government programs to buoy the middle class is the same.
The vice president opened her Labor Day observance with a rally at a high school gymnasium in Detroit, where hundreds of audience members wore bright yellow union shirts and hoisted “Union strong” signs. She noted that one of the nation’s first Labor Day parades happened in Detroit around 140 years ago and that “every person in our nation has benefited” from unions’ work.
“Everywhere I go I tell people, ‘Look, you may not be a union member, you’d better thank a union member,” Harris said, noting that collective bargaining by organized labor helped secure the five-day work week, sick pay and other key benefits and solidify safer working conditions.
“When unions are strong, America is strong,” she said.
Afterward, she and Biden met in Pittsburgh and greeted union members at the IBEW local following the city’s Labor Day parade. It marked their first joint appearance at a campaign event since the surprising election shakeup six weeks ago.
The 81-year-old Biden has spent most of his lengthy political career forging close ties with organized labor. The White House said he asked to introduce Harris in Pittsburgh — instead of the usual other way around — because he wanted to highlight her record of supporting union workers at one of the largest Labor Day gatherings in the United States.
‘In addition to opposing the Nippon Steel sale, Biden has endorsed expanding tariffs on imported Chinese steel — a rare instance of political overlap with Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, who has cheered steeper foreign tariffs on many imports. Still, in a statement Monday, U.S. Steel said it remains “committed to the transaction with Nippon Steel, which is the best deal for our employees, shareholders, communities, and customers.”
“The partnership with Nippon Steel, a long-standing investor in the United States from our close ally Japan, will strengthen the American steel industry, American jobs, and American supply chains, and enhance the U.S. steel industry’s competitiveness and resilience against China,” the company said, noting that it employs nearly 4,000 people in Pennsylvania alone.
David B. Burritt, U.S. Steel’s president and CEO, said Nippon Steel has announced plans to invest “approximately $1.3 billion in U. S. Steel union-represented facilities, on top of the $1.4 billion capital commitment they previously announced.”
Harris, 59, has sought to appeal to voters by positioning herself as a break from former president Trump’s acerbic rhetoric while also looking to move beyond the Biden era.
Harris events feel very different from Biden’s, which usually featured small crowds. But the vice president’s agenda includes the same issues he’s championed: capping the cost of prescription drugs, defending the Affordable Care Act, growing the economy, helping families afford child care — and now her position on the sale of U.S. Steel.
“We fight for a future where we build what I call an opportunity economy, so that every American has the opportunity to own a home, start a business and to build wealth and intergenerational wealth,” Harris said at a recent rally, echoing Biden’s calls to grow the economy “from the bottom out and the middle up.”
Harris has promised to work to lower grocery store costs to help fight inflation. She’s also moved faster than Biden in some cases, calling for using tax cuts and incentives to encourage home ownership and end federal taxes on tips for service industry employees. But she’s also offered relatively few specifics on major policies, instead continuing to side with Biden on top issues.
The vice president briefly appeared on stage with Biden after the president addressed the opening night of last month’s Democratic National Convention, but they had not shared a microphone at a political event since Biden himself was running against Trump. At that time, the campaign was using Harris mostly as its chief spokeswoman for abortion rights, an issue they believe can help them win in November as restrictions grow and health care worsens for women following the fall of Roe v. Wade.
For more than 3 1/2 years, Harris has been one of Biden’s chief validators. Now the tables are turned, as Harris looks to lean on Biden — a native of Scranton, Pennsylvania — to help win the potentially decisive state.
Although the vice president has appeared more forceful in speaking about the plight of civilians in Gaza, as Israel’s war against Hamas there nears the 11th month mark, she also has endorsed Biden’s efforts to arm Israel and bring about a hostage deal and ceasefire.
Israel said Sunday that it had recovered the bodies of six hostages captured during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that ignited the Gaza war, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin. The revelation prompted thousands of Israelis to demonstrate in the streets, demanding a cease-fire deal.
Before meeting in Pittsburgh, Biden and Harris met in the White House Situation Room with the U.S. hostage deal negotiating team.
Weissert reported from Washington.
