Section 232 Steel And Aluminum Tariffs – Commerce Issues Requirements For Exclusion Requests

In President Trump's March 8, 2018 proclamations announcing new tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, he directed the Commerce Department to issue procedures within ten days for requests to exclude specific products from the tariffs. Those procedures have now been issued in the form of an interim final rule and provide much clearer direction for affected firms that wish to seek an exclusion.

As expected, Commerce indicated that an exclusion will only be granted if an article is not produced in the United States in a sufficient and reasonably available amount or is not produced in the United States in a satisfactory quality, or for a specific national security consideration.

Exclusion requests are required to be submitted on Commerce's fillable electronic forms with no more than 25 pages of additional supplementary material. The forms call for detailed information about the requesting party and its dealings in the product for which exclusion is requested, as well