Update: On June 16, 2025, the president extended his February 10, 2025 presidential proclamation, Adjusting Imports of Steel into the United States, to cover imported steel-using household appliances with 50% tariffs. Goods covered will include: refrigerators and freezers, washing machines and dryers, dishwashers, cooking stoves and ovens, garbage disposals, and welded wire rack shelving, with tariffs applied in proportion to the product’s steel content. Previously, both the Biden and first Trump administrations determined that imports of washing machines and refrigerator-freezers were dumped in U.S. markets, causing injury to domestic manufacturers.
Timeline:
June 3 – President Trump issued a proclamation updating his February 10 order to raise tariffs on imported steel and aluminum products to 50% from 25%. Additionally, this order applies the April 2 “Liberation Day” tariff rates to non-steel and non-aluminum content of steel and aluminum products; previously these were exempted from tariffs, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection mandated to apply maximum penalties for misreporting the value of a good’s content, including potential loss of importation rights. Tariffs on steel and aluminum product imports from the United Kingdom will remain at 25%, pending a July 9, 2025 deadline for further negotiation of U.S.-U.K. trade relations. After July 9, the U.K.-specific tariff rate may be adjusted up or down or transitioned to an import quota. Steel and aluminum imports from Canada and Mexico will face the 50% tariff rate, with the non-steel and non-aluminum content subject to the “fentanyl trafficking” tariffs levied under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA)–subsequently ruled unlawful, though pending appeal.
February 10 – President Trump issued a presidential proclamation that reinforces and expands on existing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. This February 10 proclamation raises the tariff rate on aluminum to 25% from 10%, resets the national exemptions and accommodations and terminates exclusions for U.S. importers going forward such that a 25% tariff binds universally on imports of these metals beginning March 12, 2025.
Tariffs on steel (25%) and aluminum (10%) imports have been in place since March 2018 under national security provisions of U.S. trade law, although subsequent proclamations by both Presidents Trump and Biden amended these tariffs to allow countries with which the United States holds security relations to negotiate alternative arrangements and to allow U.S. importers to petition for exclusions from the tariffs. For many partners, this meant transforming the tariffs into tariff rate quotas—allowing steel and aluminum imports to enter the U.S. market duty free or at preceding tariff rates up to a specific quantity, after which the 25% and 10% tariff rates would apply. President Biden also tightened requirements on steel imports not “melted and poured” in North America to prevent circumvention of these trade enforcement measures.
Steel and aluminum manufacturing are critical to the U.S. industrial base for both economic and national security reasons. Both industries have been plagued by chronic global overcapacity and unfair trading practices that have pushed U.S. producers to the brink of financial inviability, most notably from heavily-subsidized and state-backed producers in China, India, Turkey, Iran, South Korea, Vietnam, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, and imports have been surging once again. The 2018 tariffs have been effective in preserving and expanding U.S. steel and aluminum manufacturing in the face of challenges to the global market, with little perceptible impact on inflation. These strategic and narrow tariffs should be distinguished from proposed blanket universal tariffs.
Impact: Expanding coverage of existing steel and aluminum tariffs preserves a tool that has helped shore-up critical domestic metals manufacturing with likely minimal impacts on overall consumer price inflation.