Department of Commerce announces steel and aluminum tariff exclusion process

The U.S. Department of Commerce has announced its procedures for excluding products from the recently announced tariffs on steel and aluminum product imports. The department has started accepting exclusion requests from U.S. industry. Instructions to submit an exclusion request can be found here.

Secretary Wilbur Ross, in consultation with other administration officials, will evaluate exclusion requests, taking into account national security considerations. In that evaluation, the secretary will consider whether a product is produced in the U.S. of a satisfactory quality or in a sufficient and reasonably available amount. A single response to each exclusion request will be posted on www.regulations.gov.

Only individuals or organizations using steel or aluminum articles identified in Presidential Proclamations 9704 and 9705 and engaged in business activities in the U.S. may submit exclusion requests. Exclusion requests will be posted for a 30-day comment period on www.regulations.gov.

Separate exclusion requests must be submitted for each unique steel or aluminum product import. For an exclusion request to be considered, the requester must provide a full factual description of the specific product, its properties, and its quantity.

Any individual or organization in the U.S. may file objections to steel or aluminum exclusion requests, but the Commerce Department will only consider information directly related to the submitted exclusion request that is the subject of the objection. Organizations submitting an objection filing on an exclusion request should provide specific information on the product that their company can provide that is comparable to the steel or aluminum product that is the subject of the exclusion request.

Organizations filing an objection also should provide factual information on the production capabilities at steel or aluminum manufacturing facilities that they operate in the U.S., the availability and delivery time of the products that they manufacture relative to the specific steel or aluminum product that is subject to an exclusion request, and discussion on the suitability of its product for the application or applications identified by the exclusion requester.

Both the exclusion requests and objection filings will be available for public viewing on www.regulations.gov. Processing of exclusion requests normally will not exceed 90 days, including adjudication of objections submitted on exclusion requests.

The forms for submitting steel and aluminum exclusion requests, and objections to specific exclusion requests, are available at www.regulations.gov. The steel docket number is BIS-2018-0006 and the aluminum docket number is BIS-2018-0002. Copies of the forms and additional information on the exclusion process also are available here. For questions concerning the exclusion process, contact steel232@bis.doc.gov or 202-482-5642 for steel-related queries and aluminum232@bis.doc.gov or 202-482-4757 for aluminum-related queries.