On a Monday afternoon in late September, Donald Trump gathered Iowa Republicans in the Oval Office to make a big announcement: the firm Mesabi Metallics would invest $15bn to make the midwestern state the site of the largest steel mill in the country. One month later, and just days before the midterm election, word has spread in the small town of Wever, population 142, that the mill will be built somewhere nearby. And that’s been about it – no shovels in the dirt, workers on a job site or machinery on the dirt roads leading down towards the Mississippi River.
Ask about the project in town, and the reaction isn’t enthusiasm, but skepticism. On paper, a steel mill seems like a great development for a corner of Iowa that has a long history both of manufacturing and the disinvestment that has struck so much of the industrial midwest. According to the White House, the project would create 6,000 jobs during its construction and then 1,750 when it is complete, and generate $95bn in economic activity.
What people can’t get over is how the project was debuted, and who was announced it. The president made the plan public just over a month before Tuesday’s midterm elections, when Iowa will play a major role in determining if Democrats regain control of Congress amid Trump’s downbeat approval ratings. Wever itself lies in a congressional district that is viewed as the most competitive in the state.
And then there’s the fact that Trump has a history of making proclamations that don’t quite pan out. Foxconn is the electronics manufacturing giant that Trump famously declared would build a massive factory in neighboring Wisconsin during his first term, only for the project to wind up flopping. A similar situation may be playing out elsewhere this year.
Just days after debuting plans for the Iowa steel mill, the president said South Korea would invest $54bn in building a long-discussed natural gas pipeline in Alaska, only for officials in Seoul to say they’d agreed to no such deal. But Iowa’s Republican-controlled legislature was undeterred, and quickly approved $1.4bn in tax breaks to make the mill happen. Charles Sutton, a spokesperson for Mesabi, a Minnesota-based firm that is part of the Indian conglomerate Essar Group, said they are on track to produce steel by 2030 from a site in “eastern Iowa”, the location of which will be announced “in the very near future”.
Elected to a third term in 2024 by less than 800 votes, she is a top target of Democrats this year as they vie to regain control of Congress’s lower chamber. As she campaigned in Fort Madison, 10 minutes south of Wever, Miller-Meeks credited Trump’s tariff regime and his major domestic policy bill with making the project possible, but said that the details of the mill are under negotiation between the county and Mesabi. Blaine Watkins, a Republican who represents the area in the state legislature, said the mill would “completely change” Lee county, where Trump won almost two-thirds of the vote in 2024.
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