GAO: Commerce Needs to Fix Section 232 Exclusion Process

Importers of steel and aluminum who have been critical of the Commerce Department’s handling of Section 232 exclusion requests have found an ally in the Government Accountability Office. In a report released Tuesday, the GAO called for Commerce to improve and speed up the process it uses to review tariff exclusion requests. The report noted that nearly three-quarters of all steel and aluminum exclusion decisions regarding Section 232 duties failed to meet the DOC’s established timeliness guidelines from March 2018 to November 2019.

GAO’s probe was initiated in April 2019 in response to the 25 percent tariffs imposed by President Trump in March 2018 on imports of steel and aluminum products, citing the Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. The administration maintains that surges of unfairly priced imports pose a threat to the domestic metals industries and thus to national security. The DOC established a process to provide relief, or exclusion, from the tariffs to companies that can prove they are dependent on imports of products that are not available in sufficient quality or quantity domestically. The GAO found, however, that the process for exclusion was ladened with obstacles that impeded proper review and timely decisions.