Snow lay thick in the Pittsburgh suburbs as Takahiro Mori, a bespectacled, 67-year-old executive from Japan's Nippon Steel, huddled in a cluttered garage with community leaders to reassure them he was not giving up on a bid to buy the town's steel mill.
Just days before the early January meeting, U.S. President Joe Biden had blocked Nippon Steel's proposed $14.9 billion takeover of U.S. Steel, a move both companies said risked thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investment.
With Biden's incoming successor Donald Trump also voicing opposition to the planned purchase, the outlook was bleak.
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