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UPDATE: A Steely Look at Steel: Commerce Directed
to Prioritize Investigation of the Effects of Steel Imports
on National Security
05/01/2017
UPDATE: On April 27, 2017, President Trump issued a nearly-identical Presidential Memorandum
directing the
Secretary to also prioritize investigating the effects of aluminum imports on national security pursuant to Section
232(b).
The original post from April 24, 2017, is below.
On April 20, 2017, President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum (“Memorandum”) directing the Secretary of
Commerce (“Secretary”) to prioritize investigating the effects of steel imports on national security pursuant to Section
232(b) of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Under the Act, if the Secretary determines that steel “is being imported into
the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security,” the
President is authorized to take actions “to adjust the imports of the article and its derivatives so that such imports will
not threaten to impair the national security.” While not explicitly specified by the statute, such actions might include
imposing import quotas, imposing license fees on imported goods, or negotiating trade agreements that otherwise
restrict the importation into or exportation to the United States of the imported article.
Why Steel?
The steel industry figures prominently in U.S. trade policy and has been the subject of many domestic legal challenges
related to unfair trade practices, as well as disputes before the World Trade Organization. From 2009 to 2016, for
example, the U.S. Trade Representative filed twenty enforcement actions at the World Trade Organization, six of which
related to the steel industry. The U.S. Department of Commerce also operates a Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis
(SIMA) System to collect and publish data about steel product imports.
As noted in Section 1 of the Memorandum, the United States already has many antidumping and countervailing duty
orders in place on imported steel products. Such orders impose duties on goods that are sold in the United States at less-
than-fair value (i.e., “dumped”), or have benefited from countervailable subsidies, and are injuring or threaten to injure
the domestic steel industry. According to a fact sheet published by the U.S. Trade Representative in April 2016, of the
332 duty orders then in place, almost half (149) covered foreign steel products. Antidumping and/or countervailing duty
orders cover a large and diverse group of steel products with a broad geographical reach, ranging from hot-rolled carbon
steel flat products from Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand,
Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom; to steel nails from China, Korea, Malaysia, Oman, Taiwan, United Arab
Emirates, and Vietnam; to steel wire garment hangers from China, Taiwan, and Vietnam. The fact sheet also reports that
in fiscal year 2015, two-thirds of the 62 investigations Commerce initiated to investigate allegations of unfair trade
practices involved steel products, and $900,000 worth of steel products were seized and $45.5 million in penalties were
assessed for violations of antidumping and/or countervailing duty laws.
According to Section 1 of the Memorandum, however, the President believes these measures “have not substantially
