MIDDLETOWN, OH ‒ Vice President JD Vance will visit his Ohio hometown on Friday.
Vance, joined by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Ohio officials, is expected to make an announcement at the Cleveland-Cliffs steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, on Aug. 21.
The Cincinnati native wrote about the impact the steel plant had on his family and childhood in his 2016 memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy." Like many Middletown residents, Vance's grandfather worked at the steel plant. It was Middletown's largest employer by the 1950s but the company, and the city, struggled amidst a declining national steel industry in the 1980s.
Cleveland-Cliffs in talks with feds for $500M grant
Cleveland-Cliffs was selected to receive a $500 million federal grant for clean energy projects from the Biden administration in 2024 to replace
its Middletown furnace with one that's powered by hydrogen.
At the time, the Cleveland-based company committed to spending $1.3 billion of its own money on the update, which would have created almost 200 permanent jobs, reduced production costs and lowered carbon emissions, according to the company.
But Cliffs abandoned those plans last year. CEO Lourenco Goncalves said during a July 2025 earnings call the company wouldn't be pursuing the project because of a lack of available hydrogen. In August 2025, Pat Persico, a Cleveland-Cliffs spokesperson, told The Enquirer that announcements of hydrogen hubs made during the Biden administration had "not materialized" as expected.
The company still wants to use the grant, though ‒ for traditional steelmaking methods that use coal and upgrades that would incorporate artificial intelligence.
What is Cleveland-Cliffs?
Cleveland-Cliffs, with its Middletown steel plant and West Chester office, is still a major employer in Butler County. At its peak, Armco, which owned the steel plant for almost 90 yeas, was Middletown's biggest employer. Middletown Works, the Middletown steel plant, now employs almost 2,000 hourly union-represented workers.
Armco entered a limited partnership with Kawasaki Steel Corp. in 1989, becoming A.K. Steel. Cleveland-Cliffs, based in Cleveland, bought A.K. Steel in 2020 for $1.1 billion.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: JD Vance to speak at Middletown steel plant today
