Almost one year after Nippon Steel closed its $14.9 billion takeover of US Steel, David Burritt, CEO of the Pittsburgh icon, said Thursday he’s “never seen a transformation go better.”

Speaking at Semafor World Economy in Washington, DC, Burritt said the new owners of US Steel, whose founders included Andrew Carnegie and JPMorgan, have embraced the team rather than clean house, brought new technology expertise to the new global steel giant, and are focused on meeting an end-of-2028 deadline to invest $10.8 billion in US infrastructure for manufacturing the metal.

The deal, which President Donald Trump signed off on in June 2025, made Nippon the world’s second-largest steel producer and gave it access to the US market without having to pay Trump’s tariffs.

Burritt said the upshot is that his company, as a Nippon subsidiary, is freed from worries about geopolitical uncertainty.

“Other companies are wondering, are they going to have the money, is it going to be a recession … there’s a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “We know we have a national security agreement that we have to get the money spent or committed by the end of 2028. This is more certainty than I had when we were a public company.”