Local review finds no permits behind Trump’s ‘already started building’ claim
The Guardian reported that President Trump has long sought to portray himself as a man of steel, from the White House photoshopping Trump to look like Superman, to enacting tariffs on steel and approving the sale of US Steel to Japan’s Nippon Steel with a “golden” share given to the US government.
The Iowa legislature approved $1.36bn in tax incentives over 10 years for a planned $15bn steel plant in Lee County, Iowa, to be built by India-based Mesabi Metallics, despite skepticism from steelworkers, a former Minnesota governor, and environmental groups about the project’s financing and timing.
The incentives were approved in a special session called by Republican Governor Kim Reynolds to expand the subsidies the state can provide for the project. The Iowa Sierra Club chapter criticized the move, with the state government experiencing budget shortfalls of more than $1bn over the past two years. “Do we need to really double the incentives that other large projects get to support this steel project?” said Pam Mackey Taylor, director of the Iowa Sierra Club chapter. The Iowa governor’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and the project is projected to create 1,750 permanent jobs and support up to 6,000 construction jobs, with steel production aimed to begin in 2030.
Skepticism centers on the financial history of Mesabi’s parent company, Essar Global, which first proposed building a steel plant on Minnesota’s Mesabi iron range in 2007 with a $1.65bn investment. By 2016, Essar Steel Minnesota had filed for bankruptcy following construction delays and financing issues at its Nashwauk, Minnesota site, where the iron ore mine intended to fuel the Iowa plant is located. In efforts to shed its debt, Essar Global sold off assets, including the completion of a $12.9bn sale of Essar Oil to a Russia-controlled energy company. Mesabi Metallics briefly changed hands to Virginia billionaire Thomas Clarke before he lost control of the company in 2018, with Essar regaining control, then losing its mining leases in 2021 when the state of Minnesota revoked them after a missed deadline.
“This plant that has been 20 years in the making,” said Mark Dayton, a former governor of Minnesota who dealt with Mesabi Metallics through its bankruptcy proceedings. “I had, a decade ago, a very bad experience with Essar Steel because they started this plant, raised lots of expectations and hopes up north, and then went into default and went into bankruptcy and the like.” Dayton said the Iowa announcement did appear to show progress, but added: “I’m skeptical of the announcement in Iowa this close to the election. That’s going to require $15bn dollars of investment. I’d like to see that money on the table from Essar before they start to bring a shovel.”
Doug May, who worked for 43 years as a steelworker at a mill in Granite City, Illinois, characterized the announcement as “political pandering” given the timing and the effect of tariffs on Iowa farmers. “He pulled the same thing in 2018, just before an election, when he announced that $10bn Foxconn project,” May said, referring to a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer’s Wisconsin plant that Trump described as “the Eighth Wonder of the World.” The Foxconn site currently has around 1,100 employees, well short of the much more than 13,000 jobs Trump and Foxconn had promised. The Guardian reports that Trump’s approval ratings are now lower than they were ahead of the 2018 midterms, when Democrats regained control of the House.
May argued that Trump is using the steel industry as a campaign strategy while ignoring the work the United Steel Workers have done to push to save the steel industry, including filing over 150 trade cases over the past decades to combat unfair trade practices that harm US workers. Over 40 domestic steel producers in the US filed for bankruptcy in the late 1990s. “We, the steel workers in Granite City, served as the best foot soldiers lobbying Congress, holding rallies and campaigns, to raise awareness to the cheating of foreign steelmakers and the need for stronger trade enforcement during that era,” May added. “Arguably, we played a very important role in saving domestic steel.”
Trump has claimed “they’ve already started building” the Iowa plant, but TV6 Investigates, a local NBC news affiliate, reviewed county records and disputed the claim. “The review found no major property purchases tied to the project this year. County officials say they don’t have details from the company about its plans. No permits have come before supervisors,” the outlet reported. A site location has not been disclosed by elected officials or Mesabi Metallics, and Mesabi Metallics did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The plant was originally scheduled to be built in Minnesota, a state that typically votes for Democrats. The shift to Iowa, where Republicans are struggling in the midterms, has drawn attention. The White House did not comment directly on the plant’s move to Iowa or on White House senior communications strategist Jason Miller’s past work as a registered foreign lobbyist for Mesabi Metallics. Mesabi Metallics paid at least $240,000 to SHW Partners, a government relations firm led by Miller, according to lobbyist disclosure records. The government of India also paid his firm $150,000 per month for “strategic counsel, tactical planning and government relations assistance on policy matters before the US government,” under a contract that began in April 2025.
“Taking a lobbyist who’s on the payroll of a foreign government and companies with huge government contracts and putting him inside the White House will create a three-headed beast of divided loyalties,” said Jon Golinger, a democracy advocate at Public Citizen, in a statement on Miller’s appointment to a White House role.
Miller responded: “Public Citizen is a bunch of America-hating fake news soy boy losers who prefer new investments go to China and not the US, and respectfully, they can get rekt. Not only did I deregister from Mesabi Metallics months ago, I took the additional step of recusing myself from having anything to do with their announcement at the White House.”
White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an email: “No president has done more to revive American steelmaking than President Trump, whose 50 percent Section 232 tariffs on steel is driving record investments into this key sector. Those tariffs, along with the Administration’s other pro-growth and pro-investment policies, are not going away anytime soon.”