According to the 232nd article of the trade expansion act of the United States, “if an American enterprise is unable to obtain the products they need from the domestic metal producer, the enterprise can apply for exemption.”
On 20 days of local time, Ross, the US Minister of Commerce, testified when he was in the Senate Finance Committee. It had received 20 thousand requests from the US enterprises to grant tariff exemption treatment, and hoped that the government would approve their tariff-free import of steel products.
At present, only a small proportion of the 20 thousand applications have been approved. Ross said on that day that the Ministry of Commerce has made decisions on 98 of them and approved 42 items, and the other 56 applications have been rejected. Ross also said that in the near future, we can see that the number of exemptions will increase significantly. When this happened, Ross did not explain.
At the 20 – day Senate Finance Committee hearing, two-party MPs were “full of fire” on Ross, and MPs were complaining and criticizing the Trump administration’s intensification of trade tensions with key US allies, and the senators described the government’s “chaos” and “incompetence” as the way the government raised steel and aluminum tariffs.
The government has increased tariffs, making the price of steel more and more concerned by many manufacturers in the United States. According to the financial times 20, the benchmark steel price in the US has risen nearly 40% this year, far exceeding the increase in Europe and other parts of North America.
In the early June, President Trump imposed 25% and 10% tariffs on steel and aluminum products in EU, Canada and Mexico, ending the exemption arrangements since March. Canada announced that it would impose retaliatory tariffs on US exports of $12 billion 900 million since July 1st.
On the 20 day, the European Commission announced that, in order to rebalance the situation, it decided to impose supplementary tariffs on some goods imported from the United States to the European Union in response to a new tariff on the import of steel and aluminum products from the United States.

“The measures will be targeted at the list of merchandise valued at 2 billion 800 million euros and will take effect in June 22nd.” EU Trade Commissioner Mar James Thrun said on the same day that the United States’ unilateral and unfair decision had no choice for the European Union.

Mexico has announced tariffs on commodities such as steel, pork and Bourbon imported from the United States in retaliation for the United States’ decision to import tariffs on its imports of steel and aluminum.