President Donald Trump on Monday announced a $15 billion investment by Mesabi Metallics to build a major steel plant in Iowa, putting domestic mining and steel production at the center of his administration’s economic-security agenda.
Speaking alongside Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the Oval Office event, Export-Import Bank President and Chairman John Jovanovic laid out the beginning of that supply chain: mining more of the raw materials America needs at home.
“It all starts with mining more in America. This mine is the first mine opened in America in 50-plus years focused on iron ore. EXIM financed it. But most importantly, it’s found on the Iron Range in America, which for 145 years has been the most prolific iron ore deposit in the world,” said Jovanovic. “What you see here today is private capital flowing in to rebuild America and to build America’s future.”
EXIM’s board approved a $770 million direct loan for the Minnesota mine last week, according to the bank, after signaling in March that it would support up to $10 billion in financing for the project.
The Iowa project is being developed by Mesabi Metallics, a Minnesota-based company owned by India’s Essar Group. The plant is expected to use iron ore from the company’s newly developed mine in Nashwauk, Minnesota, creating a domestic supply chain stretching from mining and processing the raw material to producing American steel.
As The Pavlovic Today reported earlier from the same Oval Office event, Trump cast that supply chain as a matter of national security.
“If we don’t make it ourselves, we can’t defend ourselves,” Trump said.
President said he would not want the United States to find itself in a national security crisis dependent on China or another country for the steel needed to produce military equipment.
Economic security, from mine to mill
Jovanovic’s remarks took that argument one step further upstream: before America can make more of its own steel, it needs secure domestic access to the iron ore used to produce it.
It is an argument administration officials have made repeatedly. At EXIM’s annual conference in April, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared that “economic security is national security.” Touring the Minnesota mine earlier this month, Jovanovic put it more narrowly: “Make no mistake: supply chain security is national security.”
Mesabi Metallics’ Minnesota operation is the first new iron ore mine and pellet plant to start up in the United States in 50 years, according to EXIM. The bank says it is expected to produce up to 7 million tons a year of high-grade, direct-reduction-grade iron ore pellets, the premium feedstock for modern, energy-efficient steelmaking.
Much of that material is currently imported into the United States, the bank says.
The $770 million loan comes as Washington places greater emphasis on securing domestic supply chains and reducing U.S. dependence on foreign sources for strategically important materials.
The company currently employs more than 200 people and expects to employ approximately 350 more once the mine and pellet plant reach full capacity, with more than 1,500 construction contractors working at the Minnesota site, EXIM said.
The newly announced Iowa steel plant is expected to create about 1,750 permanent jobs, according to the administration, extending the same supply chain from Minnesota’s Iron Range to steel production in Iowa.
‘This deal is done’
Lutnick also presented the investment as evidence of the administration’s effort to rebuild domestic industrial capacity.
Pressed over whether the project depended on Iowa approving tax incentives, Lutnick said the investment was already committed.
“This deal is done … That’s why we’re all together with the president. The president doesn’t bring people together unless it’s a done deal,” Lutnick said.
Taken together, the Minnesota mine and the proposed Iowa plant illustrate the model administration officials are advancing: American raw materials feeding American processing and manufacturing, backed by private investment and federal financing where needed.
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