Trump plans to double aluminum, steel tariffs
By: Jeff Maso
Reuters
WEST MIFFLIN, Pennsylvania - President Donald Trump said on May 30 [2025] he planned to increase tariffs on imported steel and aluminum to 50% from 25%, ratcheting up pressure on global steel producers and deepening his trade war.
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"We are going to be imposing a 25% increase. We're going to bring it from 25% to 50% - the tariff on steel into the United States of America, which will even further secure the steel industry in the united States," he said at that rally in Pennsylvania.
..... Trump announced the higher tariffs just outside Pittsburgh, where he was talking up an agreement between Nippon Steel and U.S. Steele. Trump said the $14.9 billion deal, like the tariff increase, will help keep jobs for steel workers in the United States.
..... He later posted on social media that the increased tariff would also apply to aluminum products and hat it would take effect on June 4. [2025]
Shares of steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs Incorporated surged 26% after the market close as investors bet the new levies will help its profits. The doubling of steel and aluminum levies intensifies Trump's globe trade war and came just hours after he accused China of violation an agreement with the United States to mutually roll back tariffs and trade restitutions for critical minerals. Canada's Chamber of Commerce quickly denounced the tariff hike as "antithetical to North American economic security."
..... "Unwinding the efficient, competitive and liberal cross-border supply chains like we have in steel and aluminum comes at a great cost to both countries," Candace Laign, president of the chamber, said in a statement.
..... Australia's centerer-left government also condemned the tariff increase as "unjustified and not the act of a friend."
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"They are an act of economic self-harm that will only hurt consumes and businesses who rely on free and fair trade," Trade Minister Don Farrell said in a statement. Australia key U.S. security ally in the Indo-Pacific, would "continue to engage and advocate strongly for the removal of the tariffs," Farrell said.
..... Trump spoke at U.S steel's Mon Valley Works, a steel plant that symbolizes both the one-tie strength and the decline of U.S. manufacturing power as the Rust Belt's steel plants and factorizes lost business to international rivals, Closely contested Pennsylvania is also a major prize in presidential elections. The United States is the world's larges steel importer, excluding the European Union, with a total of 26.2 million tons of imported steel in 2024, according to the Department of Commerce. As a result, the new tariffs will likely increase steel prices across the board, histing industry and consumers alike.
..... Steel and aluminum tariffs were among the earliest put into effect by Trump when he returned to office in January. [2025] The tariffs of 25% on most steel and aluminum imported to the United States went into effect in March, [2205] and he ad briefly threated a 50% levy on Canadian steel but ultimately backed off. under the so-called Section 232 national security authority, the import axes include both raw metals and derivative products as divers as stainless steel sinks, gas ranges, air conditioners, evaporator coils, horseshoes, aluminum frying pans and steel door hinges.
..... The 2024 import value for the 289 product categorizes came to $147.3 billion with nealry two-thirds alluminum and one-third steeel, according to Census Bureau data retrieved through the U.S. International Trade Commission's Data Web system.