Proclamations 10895 and 10896 restore Section 232 tariffs

On 10 February 2025 President Donald J. Trump signed Proclamation 10895, “Adjusting Imports of Aluminum Into the United States,” and Proclamation 10896, “Adjusting Imports of Steel Into the United States,” restoring the full 25% Section 232 steel duty originally imposed by Proclamation 9705 of 8 March 2018, raising the aluminum duty from 10% to 25% (above the Proclamation 9704 rate), and terminating the country exemptions and tariff-rate quotas that had been built up between March 2018 and 2024 for Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and the United Kingdom.¹²³⁴ The proclamations invoke § 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 with subsection-level authority at 19 U.S.C. § 1862(b)(3)(A) (Commerce investigation predicate), § 1862(c)(1) (presidential action authority) and § 1862(c)(3)(A) (subsequent modification of a § 232 action without a new investigation); § 604 of the Trade Act of 1974, 19 U.S.C. § 2483, is the companion authority for conforming amendments to the Harmonised Tariff Schedule. The additional duties take effect at 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on 12 March 2025 (daylight time begins 9 March 2025).⁵⁶ Each proclamation expands the list of covered derivative articles under HTSUS Chapter 99 subchapter III, building on the derivatives authority upheld by the Federal Circuit in PrimeSource Building Products v. United States, 60 F.4th 1359 (Fed. Cir. 2023), and on the post-90-day modification authority upheld in Transpacific Steel LLC v. United States, 4 F.4th 1306 (Fed. Cir. 2021).⁷⁸

1. Section 232 directs the Secretary of Commerce to investigate threats to national security (§ 1862(b)) and authorises the President, upon concurrence with the Secretary’s finding, to take action “to adjust the imports of [an] article and its derivatives” (§ 1862(c)).⁵ The 2025 proclamations rest on the 2018 Commerce investigations and on the subsequent derivatives findings that PrimeSource upheld.

2. From 12:01 a.m. eastern time on 12 March 2025, entries under the covered HTSUS classifications are assessed at the additional 25% rate by reference to the corresponding Chapter 99 subchapter III subheadings; entries cleared before that time clear at the prior rate or, where a country exemption or TRQ was previously in force, at zero.⁹

3. Foreign trading partners with revoked exemptions retain WTO dispute-settlement channels under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and bilateral countermeasure channels — Regulation (EU) 654/2014 in the European Union and the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018 in the United Kingdom.¹⁰¹¹