President Joe Biden said Thursday he is against the proposed sale of US Steel to Japan's Nippon Steel, as election year considerations appeared to outweigh the risk of angering key ally Japan.

Biden's intervention in the planned $14.1 billion acquisition comes less than a month before he hosts Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for a state visit to the White House aimed at boosting ties and countering an increasingly assertive China.

But Biden's eye is seemingly on November's presidential election against Donald Trump, with lawmakers from both sides having joined with unions in opposing the sale of an American manufacturing icon to a foreign owner.

US Steel is based in Pittsburgh in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, which Biden won in the 2020 election and will fight Trump for again this year.

"It is important that we maintain strong American steel companies powered by American steel workers. I told our steel workers I have their backs, and I meant it," Biden said in a statement.

"US Steel has been an iconic American steel company for more than a century, and it is vital for it to remain an American steel company that is domestically owned and operated."

But Biden did not explicitly say he would block the........

© International Business Times