As Pittsburgh unions march, Harris set to oppose sale of U.S. Steel during joint event with Biden

Vice President Kamala Harris plans to use Monday's joint campaign appearance in Pittsburgh with President Joe Biden to say that U.S. Steel should remain domestically owned — coinciding with the White House's earlier opposition to the company's planned sale to Nippon Steel of Japan.

Harris “is expected to say that U.S. Steel should remain domestically owned and operated and stress her commitment to always have the backs of American steel workers,” her campaign says.

That's similar to Biden, who said in March that he opposed U.S. Steel's would-be sale to Nippon in order to better “maintain strong American steel companies powered by American steel workers." But it still constitutes a major policy position for the vice president, who has offered relatively few of them since Biden abandoned his reelection bid and endorsed Harris in July.

And union officials responded warmly to the news even before Harris formally declared her opposition.

Standing outside the United Steelworkers headquarters as Labor Day parade marchers reached the end of the route, President David McCall said the Harris campaign had not been in touch about her opposition to the sale. But he told WESA the news was "absolutely" encouraging.

“As we've said from the start, we think it's a real national defense issue," McCall said. "It's a real critical supply chain issue."

With Biden and Harris’ visit still hours away, Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade — reputedly one of the largest in the country — got underway with a festive, though not terribly politically charged, air. Union members marched through the heart of Downtown — including employees of Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting Corporation — joined by a number of state and local elected officials, mostly though not entirely Democrats.

Democrats touted the pending appearance of their party’s nominee alongside the outgoing president.

“This is sacred ground” for the labor movement, said U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, who is running for reelection against Republican Rob Mercuri in the 17th Congressional District. He noted that the right to organize had solidified after a fight by employees of J&L Steel in the 1930s. Biden and Harris’ visit, he said, helped underscore the fact that “it’s important for union households to understand that Democrats like us are all about union power.”

Senator Bob Casey struck a somewhat elegiac note about an appearance that would likely be Biden’s last as a national public figure.

“Joe Biden has been here so many times. I can still remember him kneeling [for the Labor Day mass] on both knees — no kneeler, no handrails — In 2018,” Casey said. “That’s when I knew he was ready to run for president.”

Casey said Biden and Harris’ appearance would “get people focused on the choice ahead” this fall — both in the presidential contest and in his own bid for reelection to U.S. Senate against Republican challenger Dave McCormick.

Donald Trump has made his own Labor Day weekend pitch to Pennsylvania union households. On Friday evening, he held a rally in Johnstown where, during a meandering hour-and-a-half-long speech, he sought to remind voters that Harris had said she would seek to ban fracking during her failed run for president in 2019. And he noted that Biden had placed a moratorium on the export of natural gas.

“If you don’t have fracking, you don’t have a commonwealth,” Trump said.

Democrats scoffed at that claim.

“I hear Republican operatives talking about it a lot,” Deluzio said. “But I think people see that under the Biden/Harris administration we have more energy independence than ever before.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro, who described himself as an “all-of-the-above energy governor,” also on hand for the parade, also argued that Harris’ half-decade old position on fracking was not germane this year. He praised Harris for having “listened to the good people of Pennsylvania” by backing away from her earlier pledge to ban fracking.

Chris Potter

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90.5 WESA

Harris herself recently told CNN that her shift on fracking was motivated by the Biden Administration’s investments in green energy as part of its infrastructure and other federal-spending bills. She told the network that those investments showed “we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean-energy economy without banning fracking.”

But Monday’s parade was a festive affair where such partisan considerations seemed distant. Some unions kitted out their members in pro-Harris T-shirts that testified to the rush of labor endorsements Harris earned in the tumultuous weeks since Biden announced he would not run again. Harris and Biden supporters were also visible along the parade route — and supporters of auditor general candidate Malcolm Kenyatta was also well represented in the crowd. But there was no blizzard of signs hailing the Democratic ticket. Nor did WESA spot more than a Trump supporter or two along the route.

A clutch of McCormick supporters were positioned at the corner of Grant Street and the Boulevard of the Allies. Holding signs in support of the candidate, they wished marchers a happy Labor Day, receiving a mixed response. A modest number of pro-Palestinian activists were also on hand, scattered along the parade route and clustered at the end.

In her campaign's opening weeks, Harris has been careful to balance presenting herself as “a new way forward” while remaining intensely loyal to Biden and the policies he has pushed. Her delivery is very different — and in some cases she's pushed to move faster than Biden's administration — but the overall goals of expanding government programs to buoy the middle class is the same.

The Biden and Harris visit Pittsburgh on Labor Day is the first time they have both spoken at a campaign event together since the surprising election shakeup that provided a fresh jolt of Democratic enthusiasm to the 2024 election.

Harris' team says voters in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania are newly energized since she moved to the top of the ticket six weeks ago, with tens of thousands of new volunteers signed up to canvass for her and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

Harris' and Biden's appearance in Pittsburgh is part of a battleground state blitz with just over two months until Election Day. Harris first heads to Detroit Monday for a campaign event before meeting Biden in Pennsylvania.

Harris, 59, has sought to appeal to voters by positioning herself as a break from poisonous politics, rejecting the acerbic rhetoric of her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, while looking to move beyond the Biden era as well. Harris events feel very different from Biden's, which usually featured small crowds, but the vice president's agenda is chock-full of the same issues he's championed: capping the cost of prescription drugs, defending the Affordable Care Act, growing the economy, helping families afford child care — and now her position on U.S. Steel.

“We fight for a future where we build what I call an opportunity economy, so that every American has the opportunity to own a home, start a business and to build wealth and intergenerational wealth," Harris said at a recent rally, echoing Biden's calls to grow the economy “from the bottom out and the middle up.”

Harris has promised to work to lower grocery store costs to help fight inflation. She's also moved faster than Biden in some cases, calling for using tax cuts and incentives to encourage home ownership and end federal taxes on tips for service industry employees. But she's also offered relatively few specifics on major policies, instead continuing to side with Biden on top issues.

The vice president briefly appeared on stage with Biden after the president delivered his remarks on the opening night of last month's Democratic National Convention, but the two haven't shared a microphone at a political event since Biden himself was running against Trump. At that time, the campaign was using Harris mostly as its chief spokeswoman for abortion rights, an issue they believe can help them win in November as restrictions grow and health care worsens for women following the fall of Roe v. Wade.

They both have appeared at official events and met together at the White House since the ticket-swap.

For more than 3 1/2 years, Harris has been one of Biden's chief validators. Now the tables are turned, as Harris looks to lean on Biden — a native of Scranton, Pennsylvania — to help win the potentially decisive state. Biden, for his part, has laid low since ending his reelection bid. He was last at the White House on Aug. 19 and has since been vacationing in Southern California and Delaware.

But even as she's taken on the mantle of leading the Democratic Party, Harris has stood steadfastly at Biden's side. In her first sit-down interview of her candidacy, Harris delivered an impassioned defense of Biden's record and ability to do the job, even despite the events of the past two months that ended with her running for the Oval Office and Biden a lame duck.

The 81-year-old president stepped aside in July following a disastrous debate performance with Trump and a growing chorus within his own party for him to make room for a new generation.

“I have spent hours upon hours with him, be it in the Oval Office or the Situation Room. He has the intelligence, the commitment, and the judgment and disposition that I think the American people rightly deserve in their president,” Harris said in last week's interview.

She added of Trump: “The former president has none of that."

Harris said during the CNN interview that serving with Biden was “one of the greatest honors of my career” and that she didn’t need to ask Biden for his support because “he was very clear that he was going to endorse me.”

Harris has also defended the administration’s record on the southern border and immigration, one of the administration's most persistent and vexing problems. She notes that she was tasked with trying to address the “root causes” in other countries that were driving the border crossings, though Republicans have tagged her as the “border czar.”

Although the vice president has appeared more forceful in speaking about the plight of civilians in Gaza, as Israel's war against Hamas there nears the 11th month mark, the vice president has also endorsed Biden's efforts to arm Israel and bring about a hostage deal and ceasefire.

Reports from Israel said early Sunday that the bodies of six hostages were recovered — people who were captured during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that ignited the Gaza war, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin. The revelation prompted tens of thousands of Israelis to demonstrate in the streets demanding a ceasefire deal.

Before their joint appearance together in Pittsburgh, Harris also joined Biden on Monday in the Situation Room to meet with the U.S. hostage deal negotiating team to discuss their continuing efforts on a deal that would secure the release of the remaining hostages.