SECTION 232

The Biden administration has announced a number of actions aimed at strengthening supply chain resilience and revitalising domestic competitiveness. These actions stem from recently completed reviews of the supply chains of four sectors (drugs, critical minerals, semiconductors and batteries) and on-going reviews of supply chains for defence, public health and biological preparedness, information and communications technology, energy, transportation. More

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai told the Senate Finance Committee on 12 May that the law used to impose national security-based tariffs on imports of steel and aluminium products needs to be modernised. A Washington think tank called for reform of the law the same day. More

The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled on 4 February that the Trump administration did not violate the law when it imposed additional tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 to protect what it called the American national security interest. More

BIS is seeking comments from interested parties by 9 June (rebuttal comments are due by 19 June) on its Section 232 investigation into whether laminations for stacked cores for incorporation into transformers, stacked and wound cores for incorporation into transformers, electrical transformers and transformer regulators are being imported into the U.S. in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair U.S. national security. More