The frayed end of 2023, with decoupling still an active force and geopolitics in ragged shape, is an odd time for any politician to suggest — even indirectly — that their nation does not trust its closest friends.
Particularly so for the US, given the leaps of faith it continues to ask of its friends and the reminder by President Joe Biden, shortly after returning from Israel in October, that “American alliances are what keep us, America, safe”.
But the now bipartisan American backlash against Nippon Steel’s $14.9bn purchase of US Steel — a deal driven by robustly commercial motives and for which the Japanese buyer is shelling out roughly twice what a US bidder was prepared to pay — appears to be shaped by the idea that even close friends merit suspicion.