My own impression — this from an American perspective — is that the necessity for some kind of protection for these industries is not incredibly controversial. That is, they are strategic goods, there is a positive externality on national security grounds associated with having access to secure production, and as the release above points out, prior, more-limited tariffs had resulted in Chinese producers routing goods around those tariffs. China has taken over a very high percentage of global production in past years of at least steel; I have not checked aluminum.
My guess is that, while specific levels of protection might change, the US will probably seek to ensure some level of domestic or at least secure production. There might not be specifically 25% tariffs, but some form of protection will remain, regardless of administration.
I haven’t looked at the specific countertariffs proposed being imposed by the EC, and the article does not reference them, but if they amount to being on steel and aluminum because the EU similarly wants domestic capacity for similar reasons, that probably makes sense.
Note that the Trump administration has also, more-recently, imposed tariffs on other things, and these are considerably more controversial and wide-ranging. This includes autos, for which — at least based on my past reading — claims of a national security externality are probably a lot less credible, and domestic political pressures are a lot more likely. Then, even moreso, the more-recent “all goods” tariffs, the ones with a “10% baseline”. If these last tariffs remain in place for any extended period of time, and if no form of exception is negotiated — I don’t know to what extent Musk’s mentioned “0% tariff trade agreement” is based on actual administration goals — my guess is that there is likely to be considerably broader dispute than over steel and aluminum tariffs.
It sounds like this is specifically in response to the aluminum and steel tariffs that were imposed by Trump back in early February.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-restores-section-232-tariffs/
My own impression — this from an American perspective — is that the necessity for some kind of protection for these industries is not incredibly controversial. That is, they are strategic goods, there is a positive externality on national security grounds associated with having access to secure production, and as the release above points out, prior, more-limited tariffs had resulted in Chinese producers routing goods around those tariffs. China has taken over a very high percentage of global production in past years of at least steel; I have not checked aluminum.
My guess is that, while specific levels of protection might change, the US will probably seek to ensure some level of domestic or at least secure production. There might not be specifically 25% tariffs, but some form of protection will remain, regardless of administration.
I haven’t looked at the specific countertariffs proposed being imposed by the EC, and the article does not reference them, but if they amount to being on steel and aluminum because the EU similarly wants domestic capacity for similar reasons, that probably makes sense.
Note that the Trump administration has also, more-recently, imposed tariffs on other things, and these are considerably more controversial and wide-ranging. This includes autos, for which — at least based on my past reading — claims of a national security externality are probably a lot less credible, and domestic political pressures are a lot more likely. Then, even moreso, the more-recent “all goods” tariffs, the ones with a “10% baseline”. If these last tariffs remain in place for any extended period of time, and if no form of exception is negotiated — I don’t know to what extent Musk’s mentioned “0% tariff trade agreement” is based on actual administration goals — my guess is that there is likely to be considerably broader dispute than over steel and aluminum tariffs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_second_Trump_administration