President Donald Trump announced the “largest steel plant in American history” would be built in Iowa, where Republicans are facing several competitive races. “This deal is done,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said alongside the president in the Oval Office, roughly one month before the midterms.
The deal is far from done.
As of Tuesday, the company behind the project, Mesabi Metallics, and its Indian parent company, the Essar Group, did not own property in Lee County, Iowa — where the plant is supposed to be built — or in the state of Iowa, according to The Washington Sun’s review of property records. The Des Moines Register reported that residents were approached by the company in September about purchasing land.
Mesabi Metallics told The Sun that the company “has secured land in Iowa for the project,” but declined to disclose additional details about where it was in the process of buying land.
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“We are grateful to the local landowners who have worked with us openly and fairly throughout the process,” a Mesabi Metallics spokesperson, who declined to be identified, said in a written statement.
The timing of the announcement has raised eyebrows among both Democratic and Republican state lawmakers, who were told months ago that Iowa was in competition with several other states, including Arkansas, for the steel mill. Some said they feared the midterms played an outsized role in the announcement, and the president was getting ahead of actual plans — possibly to the detriment of Iowans.
“Why here, as opposed to a state that has a history of working with steel? We have multiple competitive elections, both statewide and congressional and U.S. Senate, in this state this year,” Iowa state Sen. Janice Weiner, the state’s Democratic leader, said. “Arkansas does not, and Arkansas would be a more traditional place to have steel.”
Trump announced on Sept. 28 that Mesabi Metallics would invest $15 billion in the Iowa steel complex. The president told reporters that the mill would create 6,000 construction jobs and 1,750 permanent jobs. Several Iowa Republicans in tight races this November, including Rep. Ashley Hinson, who’s running for Senate, and incumbent Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, joined the president for the announcement.
When asked at the announcement whether the project was contingent on tax breaks in Iowa, Lutnick said that “the president doesn’t bring people together unless it’s a done deal.”
But after Trump’s announcement, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, called state legislators back to the capitol for a special session to consider major tax incentives for the company.
Weiner told The Sun that the deal did not meet her expectations for protecting Iowans. The tax break nearly doubled the amount that had been discussed earlier. And Democrats could not get the company to guarantee that the 6,000 construction jobs would go to Iowa workers or whether permanent workers would be able to collectively bargain for pay or benefits, she said. On Oct. 2, the Republican-led House and Senate passed the tax breaks, with two Republicans voting against it in the House and six Republican holdouts in the Senate.
At the special session, Republican state Sen. Dan Dawson, who voted against the tax breaks, said the negotiations with the company were happening in the governor’s office rather than with the Iowa Economic Development Authority.
“Do I believe the Iowa taxpayer received the best deal in this proposition? Absolutely not,” Dawson said on the statehouse floor.
The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Mesabi Metallics’ financial history has also raised questions about the plan. The company declared bankruptcy in Minnesota in 2016 while trying to build an iron ore complex there. After years of financial turmoil, that ore complex opened last week, nearly two decades after the project was announced.
The political salience of a new steel mill, however, became immediately apparent after Trump’s announcement.
Miller-Meeks, whose district includes Lee County and is running in a tight race against Democratic former state Rep. Christina Bohannan, hailed the project in an interview with Fox News last month.
“The state of Iowa has been very forward in competing to get this business to come to Iowa. This is a part of our state that has high unemployment and it has the lowest wages, so this is extremely significant,” Miller-Meeks said.
Miller-Meeks has a history of winning tight races. In 2020, she won by six votes, and in 2024, she beat Bohannan by fewer than 1,000 votes. Both of those races went to a recount.
In the Senate race, which has become increasingly competitive in recent months, both Hinson and her Democratic opponent, Josh Turek, have campaigned on the steel mill.
“I just think about the countless opportunities for Iowa families and what this means for them. It is a game changer for our state, and frankly, for the country,” Hinson said at the Oval Office press conference.
Turek, a current state representative, voted in favor of the tax incentives for the steel mill.
“I was proud to vote in favor of this. I mean, we are a state that is uniquely hurting. We’re one of three states seeing our economy contract,” Turek said during a debate last Wednesday. “This plant could honestly be transformative.”
But while many Republicans have credited Trump’s tariff policies for the forthcoming steel mill, Turek said the president’s trade agenda has “hurt Iowa more than any other state.”
Other Democrats are campaigning on the issue, but they remain more skeptical about the tax breaks given to the company and protections for workers.
“This is a promising idea for Lee County and for our state given that our economy is among the worst in the nation,” Rob Sand, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, said in a statement on X. “I look forward to hearing more details, particularly on what protections for Iowa taxpayers will be built into the deal, and what guarantees will exist for Iowa workers to build and work in the plant if Iowa taxpayers will be asked to chip in.”
Trump’s manufacturing announcements have not always panned out. In his first term, Trump promised that a $10 billion manufacturing facility built by Foxconn Technology Group would open in Wisconsin, creating 13,000 jobs. The project was later scaled back to a $672 million facility that created fewer than 1,500 jobs.
“Oftentimes, with industrial policy, projects get cited not for their economic value but their political value, and that, of course, perversely makes it harder for the project actually to come to fruition,” said Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and trade policy at the Cato Institute.
Trump’s track record has left some lawmakers and trade experts concerned about how long the project will take and how beneficial it will be to Iowa. The White House and Mesabi Metallics told The Sun that they expect the plant to start production in 2030.
“When you see Iowa spiraling pretty quickly from red to blue, and then you see this announcement made mere days before the election with a Republican legislature calling an emergency one-day session to funnel $1.4 billion dollars to this project, it just screams political desperation,” Lincicome added.
The White House defended Trump’s record in a statement to The Sun and reasserted plans for the Iowa steel complex.
“The President has a proven record of securing historic investments, creating high-paying jobs, and bringing manufacturing back to the United States,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said. “This is going to be the first mega-steel plant built in our country since the 1960s and is only possible because he rolled back burdensome red tape, reshored industry, and created an environment for companies to build in America again.”
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