United States Steel Corporation
Common Capital Stock

• (1x) 1947 USS Common Capital stock certificate, no par value, less than 100 shares in green 

The United States Steel Corporation (USS) was formed in 1901 by the merger of Carnegie Steel, Federal Steel, and National Steel It was the brainchild of the American banker and financier, John Pierpont (J.P.) Morgan. Notably, it was the first "billion dollar" company in the world, being capitalized at US$1.4 billion at its inception. Then a vertically integrated behemoth, the company controlled nearly every aspect of its production and supply chains, including the largest commercial fleet on the Great Lakes. Its economies of scale in the production and conversion of ore and coal, to coke and iron, and then into steel, gave it its indisputable advantage. 

In 1902 US Steel controlled two-thirds of the domestic U.S. steel market. It would gradually lose market share over the next decade, but it doubled its output between 1915 and 1918 in WWI. Again, 20 years later during the Second World War, it would again rise to the call. Peaking at a labor force of 340,000 in 1943, more than 110,000 of its employees would serve in the U.S. Armed Forces during the war, with the company coming to be called the "steel backbone," of the "Arsenal of Democracy."

The postwar era saw US Steel rising to new heights, figuratively and fiscally. But, it did suffer setbacks; in the 1952 steelworkers' strike, when Pres. Harry S. Truman wanted to federalize the company, and in the crippling 119 day strike of 1959. It was during the course of this strike that foreign steel made its first inroads back into the American market in force, since the late 19th Century. The 1960s imparted renewed growth, and the decade was prosperous.

The economic malaise of the 1970s struck the steel industry very hard, and imports began to take their toll. The solution that USS management adopted in the face of it all was, "diversification." In 1981 USS purchased the Marathon Oil Company. Reflecting these changes, in 1986 United States Steel was renamed 'USX,' and the new firm was reorganized into three divisions, while enduring another steel strike. At the turn of the millennium most of the USX's profits came from the energy sector, and diversification had lost its luster as a business model. In 2001, USX spun off USS, which by then commanded a mere 8 percent share of the domestic steel market. The remaining USX renamed itself Marathon Oil, and was bought by ConocoPhillips, in 2024.

With hopes of international expansion, the "new" USS bought mills in recently communist free Serbia in 2001. In 2012 they sold them to the Serbian government. Domestically the company pared back to concentrate on its most lucrative units and business was stable enough to allow USS to endure. In 2019/20 it bought the Big River Steel company for $1.4 billion, and thereafter began to invest heavily in electric arc steel production, building a new mill for this purpose in Osceola, Arkansas.

Although a shadow of its former self by 2024, the United States Steel Corporation still retained much of its historical 'national-industrial' cachet with the American public. There was considerable uproar on both sides of the political aisle in Washington DC and across the land, when Nippon Steel of Japan made a $15 billion buyout offer for the company. Falling in the middle of one of the most hard fought and bitter U.S. presidential elections of all times, it made for much great political fodder and media hullabaloo, which in the end, meant nothing in the face of economics and simple arithmetic. The merger was approved in 2025, with provisions providing for U.S. Federal government oversight and controls on the company, represented by a unique "Golden Share."  The acquisition closed on June 18, 2025. United States Steel was no more. 

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