President Donald Trump speaks at Coosa Steel Corporation in Rome, Ga., Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026.Mark Schiefelbein/AP
President Trump, who has long married “protecting American steel” with his “Make America Great Again” slogan, reportedly accepted tens of millions of dollars in donated steel from a foreign firm for his ballroom just days before he slashed tariffs in half that could help one of its plants.
According to a report by the New York Times from earlier this week, two people familiar with the White House ballroom plans said the steel was made in Europe by ArcelorMittal, a Luxembourg-based steel manufacturer.
Last October, the president said he received a “generous” offer of steel worth $37 million—but did not mention where the steel was coming from. According to the same Times report, shortly after the donation, the White House agreed to revise its tariffs in a manner “that could benefit ArcelorMittal, by cutting in half the tariffs applied to exports of automotive steel from its Canadian plant.”
The White House has publicly disclosed only some donors to the $400-million project. The names we know include: tech giants Meta and Amazon, defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Palantir, the crypto platform Coinbase, and the family of Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary who had years-long business ties with Jeffrey Epstein. And of the known donors, few have disclosed the amount of money given—something many companies should have done through lobbying disclosure filings, according to the government ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson, responded to the Times’ request for comment by saying Trump was remodeling the White House “at no cost to the taxpayer.”
That may be accurate but doesn’t answer the question: Was this a quid pro quo deal? It’s apparent that Trump has little interest in “protecting American steel.” It’s all about boosting his own.
