Washington | US President Donald Trump is working to scale back tariffs on steel and aluminium that have frustrated some businesses and pushed up prices for items such as canned food and drink.
After lifting tariffs on steel and aluminium imports to 50 per cent last June, and expanding the levies to goods made from those metals, such as cans, cutlery and bulky appliances, the administration is now reviewing which products are affected and plans to exempt some items. The Financial Times first reported the plans.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNBC on Friday (Saturday AEDT) that Trump would make the final decision but suggested the move would be a “narrowing” rather than a broad rollback.
“If anything is done, I think it would be some sort of clarification on some incidental objects, but again, that’s going to be the president’s decision,” Bessent said.
Still, prices for metals fell after the FT report, as did shares in US steel makers, which have benefited from the hit on imports.
Shares in Steel Dynamics, which has made a $13.2 billion bid for ASX-listed BlueScope Steel, were trading 5 per cent lower on Friday morning in New York. Aluminium traded 2.3 per cent lower at $US3030 a tonne on the London Metal Exchange.
The package of levies has disrupted the global market, reducing shipments to the US and raising prices, which has hurt Trump’s approval ratings ahead of the November 2026 midterm elections.
Trump rolled back tariffs on imports of some fresh food and meat in November, responding to criticisms that the White House needed to do more to relieve the cost-of-living concerns of struggling households.
The move to levy the tariffs on derivative products that contained steel and aluminium created 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’s heard from “a lot of folks”.
Greer said he discussed the difficulties with 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 December 10. “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 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 Trump’s repeated assertions that they’re paid by foreign exporters.
If the rollback only applies to derivative products, it appears that tariffs will still apply to the $1 billion of steel and aluminium that Australia exports to the US.
The biggest exporter is BlueScope, which ships about 300,000 tonnes of semi-processed steel to the US each year. The steel is used to create flat products such as roofs and fencing by its business in the US.
BlueScope is the fifth-largest steel maker in the US, and its North Star mill in Ohio produces about 3 million tonnes annually. Despite the hit on its Australian exports, it has benefited from the tariffs overall because they made steel imports from places such as Canada more expensive.