On Sept. 17, 2025, executives from Cleveland-Cliffs, North America’s biggest supplier of flat steel for cars, were at POSCO Center in Seoul. They signed a memorandum of understanding with POSCO, South Korea’s largest steelmaker, Cliffs announced. On Oct. 19, 2026, Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves said General Motors building the Chevy Trax in South Korea is “a slap in the face of the U.S.” That is the Cleveland-Cliffs Chevy Trax story in two dates. In between, Cliffs stopped needing Korean money.
The call that said both things
The Trax remark came when a Goldman Sachs analyst asked what it would take to restart Cliffs’ idle blast furnace in Dearborn, Michigan. A blast furnace is the giant oven that turns iron ore into liquid iron. Goncalves answered that customers first have to commit to buying more steel. Then he named the Trax. Until GM moves that car’s production to the U.S., he said, Cliffs doesn’t need Dearborn (full call transcript). He also took a shot at Ford’s F-150 pickup, whose body is made of aluminum instead of steel.
On the same call, Cliffs’ finance chief, Celso Goncalves, said talks with POSCO are still going on. He pointed investors to POSCO’s own Sept. 30 filing for the status.
That filing says very little. POSCO told the SEC it has signed an MoU with Cliffs, that the matter is still undetermined, and that its next update is due by Sept. 29, 2027 (POSCO’s filing). That is a full year away.
Why the tone changed
When the deal was signed, Cliffs was losing money. It lost more than $1.2 billion in 2025, IndustryWeek reported. Korean media said POSCO was expected to pay more than $700 million for a stake of at least 10% (KED Global). For a steelmaker in the red, that was real help.
Then tariffs did their work. The U.S. charges a 50% tariff on imported steel under Section 232, a law that lets the president limit imports for national security. On the call, Goncalves said steel imports are still 35% to 40% below where they were before. With less foreign steel around, Cliffs could charge more.
Its adjusted EBITDA, a measure of profit before interest, taxes and the wear-and-tear on equipment, was $612 million in the third quarter. That is more than double the $286 million of the quarter before, according to the company’s results. Management said it expects more than $4 billion next year, and the CEO told analysts Cliffs will not sell new shares. The stock jumped 16% that day.
The POSCO talks slowed as the money came in. In July, the finance chief said no deal was close because the two sides disagreed on price, and that Cliffs had no deadline, Steel Market Update reported. In June, the CEO had put it more simply at an industry forum: “POSCO is slow.”
What the Cleveland-Cliffs Chevy Trax complaint asks of Korea
The Trax is built at GM Korea’s plant in Changwon, in the country’s southeast (The Korea Herald). It was South Korea’s top export car in 2025, with 296,658 units shipped, BusinessKorea reported. GM Korea depends on America. In 2024, about 419,000 of its cars, close to 85% of everything it built, were shipped to the U.S. (The Korea Herald). Those cars now pay a 15% U.S. tariff under last year’s trade deal between the two countries.
So the request is not small. Moving the Trax would take away GM Korea’s top export. And Cliffs is not a neutral voice. It sells the steel that goes into car bodies, so a car built in America is a possible customer for its blast furnaces.
Korea has promised $350 billion of investment in the U.S. I wrote about the first project in that package in Encinal Texas Has 540 People. Korea Is Sending $22.3 Billion. The Cliffs story is the other side of that deal. A year of tariffs turned Korea from a partner Cliffs needed into a place it wants a car line moved out of.
My take: Korean money was welcome. Korean cars aren’t.
Not advice. Just how I see it.