NPR. This is the indicator from Planet Muddy. I'm Jerry Woods.

And I'm Whelan Wong.

Last month, Pennsylvania Senator John Feterman posted a video on the social media platform X.

It's an overcast day and he's wearing a black

hoodie. Trademark black hoodie? Of course and behind him you can see smoke coming out

of a factory smokestack. I'm standing on the roof of my home right here in Braddock, Pennsylvania,

right across the street from the Edgar Thompson plant.

John Friderman lives across from a plant

that the company

US Steel has operated for over a century. And that same day he posted the video,

US Steel announced that it had agreed to be acquired by Japanese company

Nippon Steel for 15 billion dollars.

And I just have to say it's absolutely outrageous

that they have sold themselves to a foreign nation.

The senator's comments are reminiscent of what politicians were saying back in the 1980s. This was a decade when some

lawmakers were alarmed about what they saw as a Japanese takeover of the American

economy. In 1989, Representative Helen Delich Bentley of Maryland went on sea span to air her grievances.

I have been very concerned for a long time, that's spoken out many times about the Japan taking over our industry, about the

actual conspiracy of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry with Japanese

businesses and industries

to destroy various industries of ours.

Some pretty strong language there, so how do we get to this point?

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