Large multinational companies are urging Joe Biden’s administration to keep politics out of any national security review of Nippon Steel’s purchase of US Steel after a bipartisan backlash to the deal in Washington.

The Japanese company’s $14.9bn proposed acquisition of the Pittsburgh-headquartered steelmaker has provoked outrage from prominent lawmakers, with Biden administration officials calling for it to be investigated on national security grounds. 

The Global Business Alliance, a trade group representing the largest foreign multinationals investing in the US, on Tuesday wrote to US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen to ask her to focus “only on actual facts” in conducting any possible review, despite “the rhetoric being espoused from across the political spectrum”.