The administration of US President Donal Trump is working to narrow its broad tariffs on steel and aluminum products that companies find difficult to calculate and the EU wants reined in as part of its pending trade deal with the US, a person familiar with the matter said.
The US Trade Representative’s Office is scrambling to resolve complications spawned last year by the US Department of Commerce’s efforts to rush out Trump’s tariff agenda, the person said.
The White House has communicated to companies that adjustments are in the works, but details and timing remain unclear, the person said.
Photo: Reuters
The rollback plans were reported earlier by the Financial Times.
Aluminum fell in London following the report.
Trump last year imposed a 50 percent levy on foreign steel and aluminum in a measure aimed at Chinese overcapacity. The step wound up hitting other major trading partners hard, including Canada, the EU, Mexico and South Korea.
Later added to the list were so-called derivative products that contained the metals, creating an arduous task for companies to identify the percentage of the materials in goods they sourced from overseas.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer acknowledged two months ago that “there’s some complexity” with the derivatives tariffs and that he had heard from “a lot of folks.”
He said he discussed the difficulties with US Customs and Border Protection, and that he was “very open” to feedback.
“We’re committed to making it as smooth as possible,” Greer said during an Atlantic Council forum on Dec. 10 last year. “Naturally, when you are moving trade policy that’s been more or less the same for 70 years to a new outcome, and you’re changing the tariff regimes, there’s going to be challenges in making it operational.”
Trump’s taxes on US imports have also come under increased scrutiny this week in the US Congress and in separate reports by the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — both of which said American consumers and businesses are shouldering most of the costs of his tariffs. That runs counter to his repeated assertions that they are paid by foreign exporters.
Ending or curtailing the derivative tariffs would be a positive step for the US-EU trade accord. A framework for the deal was negotiated last year, but it has not been fully implemented.
The EU still faces a 50 percent US duty on steel and aluminum exports, as well as on many other derivative products.
The EU is particularly concerned that the breadth of goods hit by the 50 percent metals rate, as well as potential new, higher levies on different industries would dilute the EU-US trade deal and the agreed 15 percent tariff ceiling, Bloomberg has reported.
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