White House Ballroom Uses Donated Foreign Steel Despite Trump's 50% Tariff on Steel Imports

Details

ArcelorMittal, a Luxembourg-based firm and the world's second-largest steelmaker, is donating tens of millions of dollars worth of European-produced steel for the structure of President Trump's White House ballroom project — publicly valued by Trump at $400 million, though contractor records later put the cost at $600 million — according to The New York Times, citing two people familiar with the plans. The donation directly contradicts Trump's stated trade agenda of protecting American steel producers through aggressive tariffs.

Background

Trump first imposed a 25% tariff on foreign steel in 2018. In June 2025, he doubled it to 50%, an effort to block foreign metals from the U.S. market and encourage domestic production. Throughout his second term, Trump has repeatedly championed American steelworkers, posting on social media that "America's future" should be built with U.S.-made steel and appearing alongside steelworkers beneath a White House sign reading "American Jobs, American Steel."

The White House announced the ballroom project in July 2025, describing a 90,000-square-foot state ballroom to be built on the site of the East Wing. The East Wing was demolished in October 2025. Trump's public estimate of the project's cost doubled from $200 million at announcement to $400 million by December 2025, and internal estimates by the project's contractor, obtained by The Washington Post, had reached $600 million by March 2026. Trump insisted throughout that the project would cost taxpayers nothing, funded entirely by private donations from wealthy individuals and corporations — the premise under which donations like ArcelorMittal's were solicited, and one that contractor records later contradicted (see below).

In October 2025, the White House released a list of 37 donors funding the project, including Meta, Apple, Google, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's family, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, and cryptocurrency billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Some $22 million came from Alphabet as part of a settlement for a 2021 lawsuit Trump brought against YouTube. While some donors were made public, the White House has allowed others to remain secret, and ArcelorMittal was never publicly identified as the steel supplier.

The Steel Donation and Tariff Timing

Trump discussed the steel donation at a White House dinner for ballroom donors in October 2025, telling attendees that a "great steel company" had offered to donate the steel. He did not identify the company or the origin of the steel. According to The New York Times, two days after those remarks, the White House issued a proclamation containing a provision authorizing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to reduce by up to half the tariffs for aluminum or steel producers operating facilities in Canada or Mexico that supply U.S. automakers. ArcelorMittal makes automotive steel in Canada that is exported to the United States.

A White House official, speaking anonymously, called the connection between the donation and the tariff adjustment "tenuous," noting that no company had yet received the exemption and that the provision would benefit other steel companies as well.

Another White House official emphasized that ArcelorMittal benefits the U.S. economy through a joint venture with Nippon Steel in Alabama and an iron mine in Minnesota, and denied the company received anything in return for its donation.

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle stated that Trump was "making the White House beautiful and giving it the glory it deserves at no cost to the taxpayer — something everyone should celebrate," adding that "only people with a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome would find a problem with that."

Snopes noted that the White House refused to confirm or deny the reporting, stating: "Due to the top secret and sensitive nature of various elements of the East Wing Modernization and Ballroom project, we do not discuss specific materials and where or how they are applied."

ArcelorMittal and Trump Administration Connections

ArcelorMittal's chairman, Lakshmi Mittal, has been a vocal supporter of Trump, praising him at a business roundtable in New Delhi in 2020. Mittal also had a long history of business dealings with Wilbur Ross, Trump's first-term commerce secretary. Ross sold a steel company to Mittal's firm and served on ArcelorMittal's board of directors until he was confirmed as commerce secretary.

The Financial Times reported in October 2025 that an oil refinery partially owned by Mittal in India had purchased Russian oil transported on vessels sanctioned by the United States and Europe, though the refinery subsequently halted those purchases.

ArcelorMittal also committed last year to expanding a facility in Alabama — acquiring Nippon Steel's 50% stake in a joint-venture steel plant — which could help it qualify for the tariff reduction provision in the October proclamation.

Domestic Steel Industry Response

The Steel Manufacturers' Association, a trade group representing North American steelmakers, pushed back on the use of foreign steel. Executive Vice President Brandon Farris said the domestic steel industry was "experiencing a resurgence" thanks to tariffs and could supply whatever steel the president needed. He added that U.S. producers "stand ready to supply the high-quality, American-made steel needed to bring the president's infrastructure and manufacturing priorities to life."

USW International President Roxanne Brown stated: "Tens of thousands of American steelworkers stand at the ready to supply our nation with high-quality products. The White House — the people's house — belongs not to one person or administration, but to all of us. Any changes, any renovations, any updates to it should first draw on the resources our domestic workers proudly provide."

Minnesota State Senator Grant Hauschild called the use of foreign steel "a disgrace," pointing to Iron Range mines sitting idle and hundreds of steelworkers out of work. He added: "The White House should stand as a symbol of American strength, built by American workers with American steel."

Broader Donor Scrutiny

The steel donation adds to existing scrutiny of the ballroom's funding. On April 6, 2026, the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, urging an investigation into whether more than 30 corporate lobbyists violated federal law by failing to report donations to the ballroom and three other Trump legacy projects — Freedom 250, the Trump Kennedy Center, and the Trump Presidential Library. The Lobbyist Disclosure Act requires lobbyists to disclose donations to entities "established, financed, maintained, or controlled" by executive branch officials.

Separately, the ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) found that at least 23 known contributors to the ballroom should have disclosed their donations in regular lobbying disclosure filings, but only one company — Vantive Healthcare — actually did so.

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) wrote to all 37 disclosed donors in October 2025, requesting information about the terms of their donations and any potential agreements reached in exchange for their contributions.

The Donation-Funded Premise Unravels

The rationale under which the White House solicited donations like ArcelorMittal's — that private generosity would spare taxpayers entirely — was contradicted by two Washington Post investigations in June 2026.

On June 16, the Post reported, based on six contractor cost estimates obtained by the paper, that internal projections by Clark Construction put the East Wing project at $600 million — with more than half coming from taxpayers. A March 5, 2026 project summary allocated $293 million to "private sources" against $307 million from taxpayer-funded accounts: $155 million from the Secret Service, $149 million from the White House Military Office, and $3 million from the Executive Residence. The records showed the project was projected to rely heavily on taxpayer money from the start — a preliminary estimate dated July 11, 2025, weeks before the public announcement, already anticipated more than $100 million in taxpayer funding. Trump nonetheless told reporters on March 31, 2026: "This is taxpayer-free. We have no taxpayer putting up 10 cents." Davis Ingle maintained in response to the Post that "President Trump and generous American patriots are funding the ballroom to the tune of approximately $400 million." Even some Republicans have treated the donation promise as binding: after the administration recast the East Wing rebuild as a national security imperative, seven Republican senators joined Democrats to block a bill by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) authorizing $400 million for the project, with Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) saying: "President Trump indicated that the ballroom was going to be built with private donations. I think that's the commitment that should be kept." (The full cost record, including the timeline of rising estimates against Trump's public claims, is documented in the tracker's entry on the ballroom's taxpayer cost.)

A follow-up Post investigation on June 30 revealed that the White House had secretly awarded Clark Construction a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million for the ballroom, routing it through the Executive Residence — an office exempt from federal competitive-bidding and public-disclosure rules that is ordinarily responsible for routine repairs, entertainment expenses and furniture purchases. Joshua Fisher, director of the White House Office of Administration, indicated on the contract that no bids were solicited because "the disclosure of the executive agency's needs would compromise the national security" — the same secrecy rationale the White House invoked when it refused to confirm the ArcelorMittal donation, citing the "top secret and sensitive nature" of the project's materials. The contract, signed September 22, 2025, included a nondisclosure agreement, and Clark told the White House it planned to award no-bid deals to at least 11 subcontractors, two of them Clark subsidiaries. Records showed Trump was personally involved in negotiating costs, including a March 4, 2026 negotiation over a concrete price from a wholly owned Clark subsidiary. Trump had told The New York Times in January that Clark executives offered to build the ballroom for free — "They said: 'Sir, we'll do it for nothing. This is the greatest honor'" — but Clark's internal records projected the company would receive $65 million in combined profit, overhead and staffing costs. Contracting experts told the Post that Clark's 3 percent profit rate for early work was typical, but that competitive bidding would have ensured the best price for taxpayers on a project of this size — a concern sharpened by the records showing taxpayers, not just donors, were expected to fund roughly half the cost.

Taken together, the reporting shows a funding structure opaque on both sides of the ledger: undisclosed donors — including a foreign steelmaker with business before the administration — on one side, and a secret no-bid contract drawing on taxpayer accounts on the other.

Legal Challenges to the Ballroom

The ballroom project itself has faced legal challenges. The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued the Trump administration over the demolition of the East Wing. On March 31, 2026, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon granted a preliminary injunction temporarily ordering a halt to construction; the order paused above-ground work while allowing construction of the project's underground bunker to continue. Earlier in the proceedings, Judge Leon acknowledged that describing the demolition of the East Wing as merely an "alteration" to the White House would require "some brazen interpretation of the laws of vocabulary."

In the litigation, the administration has claimed authority under the federal statute permitting presidential spending on the "care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing, improvement, air-conditioning, heating, and lighting" of the White House residence — the same law White House officials cited internally to justify awarding the no-bid Clark contract. The court concluded in March that this authority does not extend to demolishing the East Wing and building the ballroom, and the administration has appealed. The Post noted that, as of its June 30 report, the litigation had not surfaced the fact that the construction contract was awarded without competitive bidding.

The National Capital Planning Commission — chaired by Will Scharf, a top White House aide — voted to approve the project on April 3, 2026, over overwhelmingly negative public comments. Trump went ahead with construction before seeking input from either the planning commission or the Commission of Fine Arts, both of which he reconstituted with allies and supporters.

Public Opinion

A 56% majority of Americans oppose construction of the ballroom, including 45% who strongly oppose it, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted in October 2025. Just 28% support the project.

Fox News host Jesse Watters reported that when asked about his motivations for the project, Trump explained: "It's a monument. I'm building a monument to myself — because no one else will."