The White House boasted about 1,750 jobs that would be created from a new $15 billion steel plant announced by President Donald Trump, but several right-wing figures expressed outrage Tuesday as details about the project began to emerge.
The steel mill will be constructed by Mesabi Metallics, a Minnesota-based company that carries years of baggage, including project delays, bankruptcy, unpaid contractors and disputes with Minnesota state officials.
However, what frustrated right-wing figures was not the company’s financial struggles, but rather its use of the H-1B visa program.
“Mesabi Metallics is owned by an India-based company and is already an H1B sponsor,” wrote Grace Chong, the chief operating officer for “War Room,” the program run by Trump’s former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. “So how many of the 1,750 jobs at its new Iowa steel plant will actually go to American workers?”
Mesabi Metallics is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Essar Group, an India-based conglomerate whose portfolio companies had aggregate annual revenues of around $15 billion as of January 2025. Mesabi Metallics has already sponsored workers through the U.S. H-1B visa program, a federal program allowing employers “who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce” to sponsor foreign workers for employment.
Critics have scrutinized employers’ use of the program, accusing companies of relying on it for “cheap labor” and using it as a tool to “prevent union organizing.”
“Trump brags about bringing in a steel company and come to find out it’s from India and already uses H1B visas to import workers,” wrote former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in a social media post on X Tuesday.
“MAGA is so America Last it’s almost comical at this point. Oh but we have to stop the communists Democrats!! Meanwhile Trump [loves New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani and [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping]!”
Trump brags about bringing in a steel company and come to find out it’s from India and already uses H1B visas to import workers. MAGA is so America Last it’s almost comical at this point. Oh but we have to stop the communists Democrats!! Meanwhile Trump
’s Mamdani and Xi!!
https://t.co/OXyKVG9p9h — Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene
(@FmrRepMTG) September 29, 2026
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