https://www.essar.com/our-work/metal-mining/mesabi-metallics/ Mesabi is integral to the Essar Portfolio for decarbonising the global steel industry with its impact in North America. The asset has mine life of over two decades. It has been established to fulfil and accelerate the increased demand for Direct Reduced high-grade iron ore pellets for Green Steel transition. Its 7 MTPA pellet making capabilities and lowest-cost production are set to drive project payback in five years of its starting operations.
Mesabi executives have leaned on a Trump-world insider as the company has sought to expand its footprint in the United States. The company hired Jason Miller, a longtime Trump adviser, as its lobbyist, paying him at least $240,000 through his company SHW Partners, according to lobbying disclosure records. The government of India also hired Mr. Miller’s company, paying $150,000 per month for “strategic counsel, tactical planning and government relations assistance on policy matters before the U.S. government,” according to federal filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Mr. Miller said in text messages that he had stopped his work as a lobbyist for Mesabi, adding that he deregistered with the company at the end of July, and deregistered as a lobbyist for India in June. He has since joined the administration as an unpaid special government employee. He was not present in the Oval Office and said he had “recused” himself from Monday’s announcement.
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that tracked Mr. Miller’s lobbying on behalf of Mesabi and the Indian government, said that the extension of potentially billions in taxpayer-backed loans from EXIM Bank deserved more scrutiny because of Mr. Miller’s role.
“In any other administration, this would be treated as a monumental scandal,” Mr. Weissman said. “But in this one, it’s just another day.”
It’s an empty promise designed to try and get voter support before they are obliterated in November. This will happen exactly as the Minnesota Foxconn plant did. Or didn’t. Sorry.
As US President Donald Trump announced a $15bn steel megaplant while seated at his Oval Office desk on Monday, he had a lineup of mostly US politicians standing behind him – from cabinet members to elected representatives from Iowa, where the mill is to be built. There was one exception: an Indian man with a receding hairline and a lilac pocket handkerchief, standing behind the US president’s right shoulder.
Ravi Ruia is a cofounder of the Essar Group, which owns Mesabi Metallics, the Minnesota-based firm that’s building the steel mill, which is expected to be the United States’s largest once it is complete. A decade earlier, in October 2016, his brother Shashi was in the photo frame with a different president during the signing of another major deal: Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
The U.S. was one of only three Top 10 producers to increase production in 2025, Brussels-based worldsteel reported. In full-year 2025, the U.S. produced 82 million metric tons, a 3.1% increase. In contrast, Japan fell from 84 million tons of output to 80.7 million tons, a 4% slide.
Global leader China dropped below one billion tons of steel production last year, falling 4.4% to 960.8 million tons. Conversely, No. 2 India remained on the upswing, with its production increasing 10.4% to 164.9 million tons. The only other Top 10 producer to increase output in 2025 was Turkiye, where production grew 3.3% to 38.1 million tons.
Germany suffered the biggest decline, with its steel output declining 8.6% to 34.1 million tons.
Steelworkers must be heartened that the US will spare no taxpayer expense to expedite the location of foreign-owned companies into our industrial economy.
I know there has a been a big effort to capture, detain and expel from the US foreign-born workers, to protect cultural norms.
Has an exception been made for foreign owned companies, such as Indian steel companies like Mesabi Metallics, so that Iowans can assimilate the Indian workplace culture?
$1 billion in tax incentives (plus some taxpayer-funded loans) and some ol’ fashioned presidential diplomacy/lobbying seems like a strong downpayment for the US to import and acclimate to a foreign enterprise.
It’s kinda a lite version of America First, but it’s a start.
special session to award Mesabi Metallics $1.36 billion over ten years in tax incentives for a new steel plant Lee County. Mesabi Metallics is owned by the *Indian conglomorate Essar Group.
Certainly so for the 2000 people working on the plant. How much do the workers at the Nissan plants in Tennessee and Mississippi mind that the company is Japanese? What about the BMW workers in South Carolina? How about the Ukrainian drone factory to be built in Ohio? Or Bayer’s plan for a $2 billion plant in the Midwest?