The US Department of Commerce will remove 30 steel and aluminum products from its list of "general approved exemptions", again imposing tariffs on these items in accordance with the National Metals Tariffs under Section 232, the Department said on December 9.
“Based on Commerce's review of the public comments received in response to the December 14th Rule and additional analysis by Commerce on filed Section 232 exemption requests, Commerce determined that the subset no longer met the GAE inclusion criteria and, therefore it must be removed, ”says the final rule published in the Federal Register.
26 steel products and 4 aluminum products delisted from the GAE list will again be subject to tariffs starting December 27.
In 2018, the Trump administration used section 232 to apply tariff rates of 25% and 10% to broad categories of steel and aluminum products. However, the tariff program allowed importers to request the exemption of certain shipments from tariffs on an individual basis if the goods in question were not produced in the United States in sufficient quantity or quality, or for reasons of national security.
Commerce established the GAE list in the previous interim final rule on December 14, 2020, to improve the efficiency of the exclusion request process, since importers will not need to make custom exclusion requests for GAE items.
The GAE designation granted full exemption from tariffs for certain products if there were no objections to previous exemption requests for the products in question and if such a general exemption was warranted for all importers.
The original listing designated 123 steel and aluminum products as GAE, although the listing is subject to change at Commerce's discretion. The list now contains 93 items after deletion.
