White House points to real-life example of Trump's winning economic strategy amid 'affordability' woes

FIRST ON FOX: The White House is celebrating the reopening of a steel furnace in Illinois that will usher in hundreds of jobs — pointing to it as an example of the president's economic pledge to increase U.S. jobs. 

"American Steel, American Jobs — that’s what President Trump promised, and that’s what President Trump is delivering," White House spokesman Kush Desai told Fox News Digital Monday. "U.S. Steel’s new plans to restart its Granite City blast furnace and hire 400 workers is the latest proof that President Trump’s tariffs, tax cuts, and deregulation are delivering for the American worker and safeguarding our national security."

U.S. Steel, the nation's second-largest steel manufacturer, announced in December that it would again make steel slabs at its Granite City Works plant near St. Louis after its furnace shutdown in 2023. The furnace originally shutdown over a United Auto Workers strike that year. 

"After several months of carefully analyzing customer demand, we made the decision to restart a blast furnace," CEO David Burritt said a statement, according to The Associated Press. "Steel remains a highly competitive and highly cyclical industry, but we are confident in our ability to safely and profitably operate the mill to meet 2026 demand."

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In September, U.S. Steel said it was set to stop processing steel slabs at the plant altogether following Nippon Steel, a Japanese steel manufacturing company, purchasing U.S. Steel in a Trump-backed deal, before reversing course on the plant's productivity in December. 

The White House touting the announcement comes as President Donald Trump launches a tour in the U.S. to meet with Americans to tout his administration's economic policies. The Democratic Party has increasingly leaned into promoting the platform of "affordability," which helped hand them victories in the off-season 2025 election cycle. 

U.S. Steel said it anticipates to resume steel production at the Illinois plant in 2026, according to The Associated Press.

The outlet reported that there are only 12 operational steel furnaces across the U.S., which is far lower than the 140 that operated in the 1970s. 

"When I came into office eight years ago, I proclaimed a simple but crucially important principle: if you don’t have steel, you don’t have a country; you don’t have a country, you can’t make a military," Trump said during an event in Pittsburgh in May. "A strong steel industry is not just a matter of dignity or prosperity and pride, it’s above all, a matter of national security."

Trump is set to travel to Pennsylvania Tuesday to promote his economic policies in the Rust Belt, which follows Democrats winning a series of elections in November focused on the message of affordability as voters reported the current state of the economy has them on edge. The Trump White House has responded with heightened rhetoric that the president is cleaning up economic messes left over from the Biden administration and is staying on target to deliver jobs and lower costs for consumers. 

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"Putting an end to Joe Biden’s inflation and affordability crisis has been a Day One priority for President Trump. Every Trump administration official has been playing their part over the past year to deliver on this priority, from slashing costly regulations to securing historic drug pricing deals — efforts that have cooled inflation and raised real wages," Desai previously told Fox Digital when asked about the White House's messaging on affordability. 

Voters, however, have reported anxiety over the current cost-of-living woes, including 76% of voters reporting that they view the economy negatively, up from the 67% who reported the same in July, according to a Fox News national survey published in November. 

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Vice President JD Vance defended the administration's affordability messaging in comment to NBC News earlier in December, saying that it's a "hoax" to attempt to pin blame on Trump policies for the current economic concerns.  

"I think the president certainly understands that prices got way too high," Vance told NBC News. "But I think what the president’s saying is the idea that, 11 months into the administration, that we could solve all of the affordability problems created by Democrats — I mean, that’s the hoax. The hoax is the idea that it’s our fault and not the Democrats’ fault. And I do think that’s a totally bulls--- narrative."

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"I think the voters will ultimately have to make that choice," Vance said in an interview with the outlet. "I certainly see some of the polling that you’ve seen. But I think that the reason why we have elections every two years and not every year, at least for Congress, thank God, is you’ve got to give a little bit of time for this stuff to work."