(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump's confirmation Thursday that he'll slap harsh duties on steel and aluminum shipments appears to leave those lobbying against the measures with little room for maneuver. But there's still a flicker of hope for them.
1. Exemptions
Trump said he plans to sign the measure some time next week. If the confusion in the hours before today's announcement is anything to go by, a week is a long time in U.S. policy making. While Trump didn't say any country would be excluded from a 25 percent duty on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum, Canadian producers “have to keep hoping” for an exemption, according to Jean Simard, who heads the country's aluminum association.
2. Products
Those tariff levels “are the intent,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said after Trump's announcement, with details of the action still to be written. That begs the question: will all types of steel and aluminum products be included?
3. Implementation
Will changes be made after the tariffs are implemented, in a similar way as the Bush administration did after passing its steel 201 petition in 2002?
Those tariffs, which were found to be illegal by the World Trade Organization, were originally scheduled to run until March 2005. They were imposed after the International Trade Commission found that surging steel imports were a substantial cause of serious injury or threat of serious injury to the U.S. industry. Revocation of the tariffs allowed the U.S. to avoid some $2.2 billion in retaliation threatened by the European Union.
To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Deaux in New York at jdeaux@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Attwood at jattwood3@bloomberg.net, Joe Richter
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